Harry's Place

Your stance on mass immigration is held by 82% of the public, including a majority of both recent and “settled” immigrants, according to YouGov’s poll of last April. So it’s clearly not right wing, it’s centrist and mainstream. The polling data shows there are two extremist positions on immigration: sending ‘em back in their millions and bringing ‘em in in their millions. Currently we have the latter happening, hence rising support for the BNP despite our being less racist as a nation than ever.

Never mind what left wing and right wing mean.

What on earth does “pro-British” mean?

It’s meaningless bollocks.

In a society divided by wealth, income and class, 60 million people can’t possibly have identical interests.

ha! Bob Crowe is very grateful to you!!!

Isn’t No2Eu in part the Militant Tendency? We should rename ourselves Socialist Unity – this is brilliant!

Anyway, yes I think there is an instrinsically ‘right-wing view’ on sexuality, which is basically that God created Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve. But fortunately we’ve moved on from rightwingers thinking that gays should be put in prison to thinking that they should keep it to themselves, we don’t need it forced down our throats or shoved in our faces etc.

Don’t ‘left’ and right’ now pretty much exclusively refer to economic policies – Marxist collectivism at the lefty end and Thatcherite free marketeering at the other?

The real debats these days seem to take place in a consensual market economy between raving authoritiarians of which New Labour have been exemplars and people who believe in freedom which would be a vast array of folk post 1997…

Ha ha! Yeah David, NO2EU is basically a far-left coalition but at least they represent some of my views and this is, after all, the European Parliamentary election, not a general election.

Internationalist, ‘pro-British’ means what it says: thinking Britain is a good place based on fundamentally good values. It means opposing the kind of extreme left anti-Western propaganda tied up in the supposed ‘anti-racist’ and multicultural theories that denigrate the West as little more than a source of evil. It also means being in favour of listening to the concerns of British people, instead of sidelining them.

Depends on what is used to classify left/right. I always classed the fascists as left because they were anti capitalist and pro worker, at least in theory. So I don’t have a problem classing the BNP as left. Others see the dividing line as nationalism vs internationalism, in which case the BNP would be on the right.

I don’t believe that nationalist socialism was historically odd and many socialists at the time admired Mussolini, so it wasn’t like it was far from the beaten path. But the conflict between the fascists and communists led to a lot of classification games. And see Trotsky and the Soviet treatment of him for more of that nonsense.

The upshot is that the terms left/right have limited classification powers and are often used as insults. Best, I think, to simply lay out the particulars of what people and parties promote.

I think our concept of left and right wings in politics was vested in the historical class divisions in our society, and it has now outlived its usefulness.

I see more of a battle shaping up beween the authoritarians, and the libertarians. At present, the former seem to be broadly on the left, and the latter on the right. But the split is ill defined. There are authoritarian conservatives, and there are libertarians on the left.

Personally, I would like to see us develop into a comfortable, cohesive, multiracial society with a strong set of common values. But that can only happen from the bottom up. It can’t be imposed by a nanny state forcing us to celebrate diversity, and putting us under surveillance by thought police.

I also considered voting for no2eu. I agreed with the same things you did, although, or rather because, I am very much part of the Left. (In the end tribalism overcame me and I voted Labour as usual. Especially as I violated the principle of the secret ballot and let my wife see what I was doing; but I thought this was pardonable as this was the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Square and she is Chinese.) I’d have thought no2eu was pretty unequivocally Left, though; the leaflet I got was signed by Bob Crow.

But I agree with your main point: “Left” and “Right” have become so confused as to be virtually useless as descriptors. The Left has a traditional and a libertarian wing: so does the Right. As we all well know, the Left has traditionally identified with the “anti-imperialist” cause, which has adopted the Palestinian narrative; this was enhanced by the Iraq war, which expanded this to include the Muslim “cause” in general. Harry’s tends to represent the section of the Left which rejects this narrative, and tends to adhere to the cause of Western civilisation, often thought of as a “right-wing” cause.

We are in a process of redefinition. It may take time. However, I suggest that a situation in which I, a Christian and an Anarchist, find myself usually in agreement with Morgoth, a rigorous atheist and in most senses a right-winger, is not going to lend itself to easy definition any time soon.

The trouble with “internationalist”’s position (”In a society divided by wealth, income and class, 60 million people can’t possibly have identical interests”) is that he and his ilk don’t usually apply it to inhabitants of other countries. At least we have a government which depends to some extent on the consent of the governed. Most of the “Third (or rather Turd) World” doesn’t have any legitimate voice at all, for precisely the reasons he mentions. And there is no good reason to pay a minute’s attention to anything any of their so-called leaders say.

It’s an interesting and thought provoking question. And my conclusion is that basically the left-wing smells and the right-wing doesn’t. I hope that helps.

If the BNP weren’t a racist party, would that make them left-wing?

The Other Ben – thanks for that. My own working hypothesis is that the right wing smells and the left wing doesn’t. Still, perhaps we agree in principle.

A test I made to try to settle this question once and for all:
http://tamponteabag.blogspot.com/2006/05/which-wing-are-you.html

Yes, OK, Larry, but you’re sorta part of the problem rather than part of the solution to Edmund’s question…

To be (a bit) more sensible for once: I’ve usually held (and got a lot of stick for it) that a lot of the (partly conservative) values which most of us here tend to share would be better served by a vastly reduced disparity in incomes. Orwell propsed ten to one as the maximum disparity for a healthy society. Ten times the annual minimum wage is £119,184. I’d stick out for that. That surely makes me Left, however often I may go to church to pray for the welfare of Israel.

Left, right, progressive, liberal and anti-racist are all terms that haven’t much meaning these days. Fascist gets misapplied all the time, although there’s plenty of it about. So does “neo-conservative”.

Isolationist is probably the only political term that seems to have an unambiguous meaning.

I suppose it depends if you chosen to use a subjective or objective measure as to Left/Right.

Nowadays, particularly in parts of north America there is a tendency for some people to view other’s political stances relative to their own.

As an example, listening to Talk Radio you would hear Nancy Pelosi called “ultra Left”, simply for not agreeing with Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh’s view of the world.

Clearly, anyone remotely astute will see the problem with that relative judgment, using the above, how would you then classify people to the left of Nancy Pelosi? ultra-ultra Left or ultra-ultra-ultra-ultra Left and so on, which is political nonsense.

But that relativism is rather common nowadays. It is simple and doesn’t require much thought.

I think that multi-axis models of the political spectrum are probably more accurate, as it is simply not always a case of workers rights vs. big business. Social attitudes fit in and whether people are drawn towards authoritarianism or a more libertarian view?

For example, the question of attitudes towards women’s rights and the centralization of power are good markers, IMO, as how many people really view the world.

Still, it is an interesting topic.

Re. wardytron’s statistics in the first comment – so popularity means it’s not right wing? If enough people support hanging, is it not right wing? If enough people support corporal punishment is it not right wing? Strange reasoning.

And what is ‘mass’ immigration? I guess when Stalin forcibly moved vast populations, that was mass migration, and who wouldn’t be against that, but that’s not what’s happening, is it?

Mass immigration is a bogeyman phrase, allowing one to object to immigrants while of course not meaning this or that individual that one knows personally, because they’re not a ‘mass’.

Right-wing means believing in economic freedom and fiscal restraint. Left-wing means the believing in authoritarian, inefficient and inequitable government control of the economy and fiscal incontinence.

OK, so the way I express it tends to hint at my own views, but it has nothing to do with sexuality Wardytron. On race and immigration the normal assumptions are really the reverse of the usual run. Free immigration is a right-wing ideal, as it has a liberal economic effect.

Not very, apart from the racism the BNP would come out near arthur scargill’s SLP.
I’m enjoying the uk’s unfolding (or not) butterfly ballot debacle http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8083435.stm I got handed my paper unfolded, but unusually it was on yellow paper. Coloured paper is afaict used for ‘tendered’ ballots and I shouldn’t have got one of those.
Anyone else get an amusingly folded or coloured ballot?

But Richard – if “right-wing” is to retain any meaning in its historical context, it means enforced obedience to established authority (I’m trying to be neutral here). Of course, as a lefty, I tend to gloss that as “making sure power, wealth and privilege stay in the same hands” – and I challenge anyone to deny that has tended to be the history of the European Right.

“progressive” almost always implies the intent of establishing a terribly well-meaning (darling) but inevitably soul-destroying, intrusive, overbearing, morally degenerate and (in one way or another), ultimately murderous tyranny. Because, it is, of course in the best interests of everyone, especially the most vulnerable and weak.

self-styled “anti-racist” (see definition of “racist”, but add layers of self-righteousness and hypocricy, more often than not)

“left”, “right”: utterly meaningless, and wholly relativistic.

“conservative” and “liberal” maybe do have some value (although there is a definite multiplicity of meanings, depending upon which intellectual era is being heralded back to, or whether, it is principally economic, political, social or moral matters that are at the fore)

Jon D,

My ballot was yellow too…is that unusual? The ridiculously enormous size of the thing was more worthy of comment I thought.

My ballot was also long and yellow.

Well yes, Venichka, but you have been (no doubt unfairly) suspected of preferring ballot papers with only one name on them…..

The EU ballot papers were all yellow, and the local ballot papers were all green.

Apparently as there was an outside chance of a general election (In which ballot papers have to be white) on the same day as eu elections. The euros had to be on non-white paper.

Strewth, James Purnell has bailed out of the cabinet now.

Could be the yellow paper’s designed to help dyslexic voters or something then. They’d been issuing them to everybody as far as I could tell from reading the Presiding officers corresponding list upside down, the worry’d be if I’d got a rogue station that was issuing everyone tendered ballots to everyone by mistake cos afaik they just fish tb’s out at the counting hall and ignore them.

I think that right wing sexuality ( for men) traditionally revolved around dressing up in womens clothes whilst being spanked by “nanny”. Still , times have changed and things just aren’t what they used to be!

The ballot papers I got looked like they would be very clear, and easy for partially sighted voters to read. If so, that’s a good thing. Large print means a large ballot paper.

Actually, I do think the UKIP complaint is a valid one. I find it a bit odd that the parties are just listed alphabetically – rather than in a random sequence (as in the case in a fair number of other countries that use PR).

Richard, I think oranges might come into it somewhere too

Backbencher Graham Allen has been interviewed on Sky, hinting that most of the parliamentary party want Broon to resign, and if he doesn’t he will get presented with the signatures of “the letter”.

Adam Bolton has been pictured out side number 10, reporting that the whole place is in darkness. You don’t expect to see it like that at this time of night.

Aren’t even any results in yet, and civil war is breaking out.

Free immigration is a right-wing ideal, as it has a liberal economic effect.

IIRC, the US steel industry recruited immigrants in order to break the unions.

“Left” and “Right” are meaningless words. Left/Right in what? economy & social wellfare? minority rights? the relationship between religion & state? inner security? foreign security/policies? There is a huge list of things in which you could be “leftwing” or “rightwing” and even then to varying degrees. You can’t take the same closedminded stance on everything (unless you want to be an XXXL extremist).

Also, greenness has been on the left and the right. You get Save the Countryside Tories and Tear it Down and build flats we can flog off Tories. There was a Right to Ramble left and a left that believed enivronmentalism was a romantic frippery against building factories to employ workers. Now sections of the left are moving towards the Greens.

You’re quite right, KB Player. Let’s face it, for most of us, Thatcher made the Left-Right argument fairly simple. It’s not like that any more. We’d better get used to it.

If Trots joining the BNP think it to be “far right”, then exactly how did their migration proceed? Did they proceed steadily from Trotskyism through Communism, Socialism, Fabianism, Liberalism and Conservatism to get to the “far right” “Fascist” BNP?

Jonah Goldberg once asked a demonstrator who was waving an anti-Fascist placard: “apart from the imperialism, mass murder and racism, what exactly is it that you don’t like about Fascism?”. The man looked at him with the sort of dumbfounded expression you might get if you tried to feed your dog a prune.

How does placing Fascists at the “far right” make any sense? Who in their right mind these days would stand on a platform of only imperialism, mass murder and racism and expect to get any traction? How is it that someone like, say, Bill Cash or Michael Howard are never likely to touch such methods with a barge pole, while Trots are far more likely to? Indeed what do such methods have to do with any ideology as such – they are means to an end, not a political programme.

Stalin and Hitler were deeply in bed together until Hitler was ready to betray Stalin. They shared military facilities and agreed very largely on ideology. What Stalin missed was the National in German Socialism. The Nazis and Fascists argued that it was far more likely for a German (or Italian) factory worker to identify with a German farmer, than he was likely to identify with a Bulgarian or Venezuelan factory worker, so cohesion was much more likely in National than International Socialism. Hence Barbarossa, and the carnage that would eventually see the Third Reich in ruins.

In his rage at this betrayal, Stalin wound up his propaganda machine, both inside and outside Russia, to paint the Nazis and Fascists as “Right wing”. The lie persists to this day, despite all its absurd contradictions. The BBC and Guardian love to use the term “right wing” to describe the BNP, as it subliminally associates such racism, intolerance and violence with the decent Right, i.e. Conservatives, to keep the “nasty party” label well stuck on. Yet the BNP agenda includes tax rises, nationalisation, external tariffs, the creation of state-run manufacturing industries, workers’ councils to run those industries and (though they tend to keep quiet about this) the abolition of the monarchy – scarcely a programme that any Conservative would go anywhere near.

The appeal of the BNP is to the white working class, not to Tory Toffs. Whenever did the white working class even dream of voting Tory?

Liberalism is a term of abuse in the USA for conservatives describing the Left. But true conservatives are liberals – they stand for small government, low taxes and Freedom. With the word “liberal” appropriated by others, they now call themselves Libertarians. And just how are you to “impose” freedom on people using imperialism, mass murder and racism?

There’s a simple test to ascertain if you’re left or right: if someone says the words “social justice” to you, if you have the urge to attack the speaker with a claw hammer (as I am), then you are right-wing.

I’m also libertarian and find the left-right spectrum problematic. Although its only problematic for my own views, it seems to me most of the voters do fit into fairly standard right-left camps.

Did any one else notice that the SLP were listed on the ballot paper as

Socialist Labour Party
(Leader Arthur Scargill)

Mentioned this to one of bods at the table, who said something about Arthur’s personality cult !

Are you sure he said cult?

No part of Scargill has any personality, least of all his vagina.

Actually, I do think the UKIP complaint is a valid one. I find it a bit odd that the parties are just listed alphabetically – rather than in a random sequence (as in the case in a fair number of other countries that use PR)

Well, in as much as they do depend on people who are rather elderly and confused or just not very bright it’s a valid complaint. As for the order – it would be fairer to randomise it, but all parties knew what the rules were. UKIP could have applied to go on as Britain First: The United Kingdom Independence Party or whatever to get round the problem.

For that matter, why did Labour chose to be The Labour Party, therefore putting themselves further down? It’s almost as if its leaders will leave no stone unturned in the effort to lose votes.

Morgoth,
In my experience, social justice means you are entitled to the rewards of your efforts, until you actually get them. At this point, you are suddenly transformed from being hardworking, to being lucky, or priviledged, and your rewards are now up for grabs.

Why do ballot papers have to be folded up anyway?

You can run them off a laser printer on coloured paper at up to A3 size and just deliver them in a stack.

Monty – take that claw hammer out of your throat and listen up. Whatever you get is unlikely to be the rewards of your efforts: might be more, might be less. Let’s not argue about that. And if nobody levied any taxes, we wouldn’t be able to stick it to the Muz. So it might as well come from those who have a bit more (especially as the phrase “rewards of your efforts” is a bit dodgy: let’s just say “lottery wins”) and my side won’t whinge if your side don’t.

Alcuin has it right! apart from the white supremacy aspect the rest of BNP thinking is campaign group labour.
The libertarian stance is the most logical and a return to Thatcherist small government seems to be the best solution.
With this proviso; any group for any reason preaching sedition or whining for special privileges should be actively discouraged.
The death of political correctness and other daft sociological constructs should be made the object of derision through free speech.
Brown is on his way out unless he’s a reincarnation of Houdini.

Wardy

which is basically that God created Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve.

Not really, are Jimmy Carter or Barrack Obama a Right wingers? In the US there are plenty of Democrat supporting broadly lefty Christian Theists… and most Jewish Theists vote Dem ….as well as Blacks.the all powerful ‘religious Right’ is largely an thinly concealed anti American BBC/ Guardianista myth.

which is basically that God created Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve.

Wardy, I’m “right-wing” and I support gay marriage, gay adoption and full equality for gays.

Well, Morgoth’s dragging his usual, well-travelled, and not exactly fragrant red herring around here. Theism has very little to do with Left/Right, nor does it have much to do with decent/indecent. I’m a Theist and I support gay marriage, gay adoption and full equality for gays too. My son’s gay and I’m not thinking of having a wall pushed over on him any time soon. I think we’d all have to admit, after what happened in Germany, the Sovbloc, China, Cambodia etc. in the 20th century, that getting rid of Theism doesn’t actually solve all our problems.

I would like someone to define ‘progressive’.
It is so damned elastic that it means everything, and is the modern equivalent of the usage of ‘Bolshevik’ which really means murderous left-wing scum.

Labour party now lining up to knock nine bells of hell out of eachother, and Adam Boulton, on Sky News. Apparently, we have a new nasty party. I suspect there have been suicide bombers with sunnier dispositions, and more constructive ambitions.

I think the question says more about someone who comes across as a One Nation Tory and votes Trot than it does abut anything else. I am not sure the rest of us share the achingly fashionable (and quite facile) existential itch with regard to what it all means any more, man.

New Labour is clearly a project of the centre and the centre left, in alliance with forces to its left. Perhaps inevitably so. I really can’t see Purnell, Blears, Blair, Milliband (and I will include myself in such august company for current purposes) ever defecting to the Tories. Centrists with an implacable animosity towards Conservatism, one might suggest.

I’m not sure it is right to call new Labour a party, by the way – I think a better description is that it is the dominant movement within the wide coalition that is the Labour Party.

No doubt new Labour (especially Blairite – I am much less convinced that this is true for “Brownite”) foreign policy holds a belief in political liberalism and democracy in common with neo-conservatism. It is merely that any self-respecting social-democratic-lite analysis wouldn’t have destroyed Iraqi public services and attempted to crush the free and vibrant trade union movement. You might therefore say that neo-conservatives are the bovine militant fuck-witted Whiggish wing of good old sensible new Labour, rather than anything else.

So, to answer the question – of course left and right make sense. If you want some sort of transcendent force beyond the political spectrum, then go cosy up with some Third Position types.

If wardytron doesn’t want homosexuals shoving ‘it’ down his throat he shouldn’t put his mouth so close to glory holes.

echoing Cipriano’s latter point, wasn’t Hoxha’s Albania the world’s only officially non-theist, atheist country ever?

and it was not exactly a shining example of progressive rule?

older readers will remember how many Albanians turn to religion after the fall of the Stalinist states in the 1990s

Funny how two and a half hours after this melee broke out, we have not heard a word of moral support from the PM’s next door neighbour.

I would pay serious folding money to know what is going on in Alistair Darling’s mind right now.

Yes, mod, Albania was declared as such in…1967, I think.

Although in fact I would say it was in fact a very shining and exemplary example of “progress in action”; babies, bathwater, etc; sure it was taken to a greater extreme than elsewhere….ultra-progress if you like

Although I also think I’m right in saying that there has been far less of a “religious revival” (i think among the Catholics and the far smaller number of Orthodox as among the Muslims) in Albania than has been the case in, well, most post-Communist states (I spose the Czech Republic is another exception to the rule)

Albania is really very much a law unto itself. That and its national religion being Albanianism (or whatever the exact expression is)

Monty – one imagines he is torn between loyalty to his old friend and ally, and the all too clear realisation that the Blairites have taken it upon themselves to secure the future survival of the party by causing his removal. They won’t get a medal from the soggy centre of the party, but I’m glad they’re doing it. Brown has to go, and the so-called “right wing entryists” are the ones who are going to keep Labour alive. I was talking to a colleague of mine earlier who used to work for Central Office (not a great surprise in my line of work, sadly), and she said that the one thing Cameron didn’t want was for Brown to be replaced. I say we give him what he doesn’t want.

Monty:

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You owe me.

I would like to know why left wing antisemites are “engaged” with and right wing antisemites are merely ridiculed.

Shmuel – probably because right-wing anti-semites are completely lost souls and can only be dealt with by RAF Bomber Command, whereas some of us forlornly hope that left-wingers might be convinced that they really shouldn’t be anti-semites…but actually neither of them are given much shrift on this site.

Cipriano, One could make the opposite common sense argument: Changing the minds of right wing racist may be easier because at least right wing racists know that they are racists. With left wing racists you must first prove to them that they are antisemites in the first place and *then* convince them to change.

I think people engage with left wing racists for reasons of affiliation. Much like Edmund points out BNP racism because he considers himself part of the right, many of the left feel the need to do the same with left antisemitism. But Edmund doesn’t feel the need to change minds in the BNP. I think that is healthy actually and a more effective way to fight actual racism. Engagement sanitizes it.

Despite the fact that we can nowadays find elements of traditional right-wing policies in political parties which, by their historical tradition, present themselves as affiliated to the left, and vice versa, still I think the difference between left and right makes some sense, because it contains an emotional weight, which allows parties to appeal to specific strata of the population who recognize themselves in those different traditions.

In what regards the difference between moderates and extremists (moderate left… far left, moderate righ… far right), it’s the difference between accepting that there is a core of values common to all democrats and despising that very core of values and seek to undermine it and replace it. I never understand why moderate right people get so upset about the label ”’far-right”’…

If far-righ or far-left parties really assumed their ideologies, they would place themselves outside the democratic system, so they adapt their speech to the constraints imposed by the democratic system and even adopt some fake moderate features to appear more acceptable to the electorate.

The standing instruction from the electoral commission in the election I poll clerked in was to fold the paper before handing it to the voter… No explanation given. My guess it’s either some etiquette thing about handing over unfolded paper that I’m too uncouth to know about or it’s designed to make the ballot paper appear valuable by having the clerk manipulate it a bit… Rather like the women on the ’sale of the century’ gameshow who were employed to stroke the prizes.
Seems some clerks decided to fold the paper window envelope style instead of the ‘classic quarters’ I’d have thought the shape of the paper called for, oddly there’s been no complaints from postal voters who presumably *did* recieve ballot papers folded up in envelopes.

Cipriano -
‘after what happened in Germany, the Sovbloc, China, Cambodia etc. in the 20th century, that getting rid of Theism doesn’t actually solve all our problems.’
Entirely agree, but just an aside; my daughter’s boyfriend’s parents come from Moldova. As Jews under the Soviet regime, life was obviously tricky but as they are both doctors they were also members of the communist party so they didn’t do too badly. When the USSR collapsed they found the new discovery of religion meant the resurgence of anti-Semitism from their point of view -suddenly they were Jews -and they had to leave as soon as they could.

Cipriano -
‘after what happened in Germany, the Sovbloc, China, Cambodia etc. in the 20th century, that getting rid of Theism doesn’t actually solve all our problems.’
Entirely agree, but just an aside; my daughter’s boyfriend’s parents come from Moldova. As Jews under the Soviet regime, life was obviously tricky but as they are both doctors they were also members of the communist party so they didn’t do too badly. When the USSR collapsed they found the new discovery of religion meant the resurgence of anti-Semitism from their point of view -suddenly they were Jews -and they had to leave as soon as they could.

Cipriano, One could make the opposite common sense argument: Changing the minds of right wing racist may be easier because at least right wing racists know that they are racists. With left wing racists you must first prove to them that they are antisemites in the first place and *then* convince them to change. your ‘right wing’ racist doesn’t see anything wrong with being a racist though, that goes for the ones that are openly racist or the ones that wish to remain racist while recognising it’s expedient to pretend not to be a racist. What can you say to someone like that except ’screw you’? The ‘left wing’ antisemite tantalizes us because they agree that racism is wrong, if we could just show them how they’ve allowed themselves to be taken in by ‘anti imperialist’ nonsense they’d be straight back on our side again… Wouldn’t they?

Yes, the left/right wing taxonomy has become a useful stick with which to beat certain people with ‘unacceptable’ views, rather than a meaningful catch-all term to classify someone’s broad political philosophy.

I voted UKIP by post as I have done since they were first constituted. I voted Tory at the General/Local Elections, though I can’t be sure that I’ll do so at the next General Election. My home town, Romford, despite being an unfashionable, mostly upper working class type place, has been pretty much Tory as long as I can remember, despite a blip in 1997. I do support a lot of the Old Labour policies though, particularly on public services and as regards the EU, but I wouldn’t class myself as a so-called ‘One Nation Tory’.

I believe in low taxes and a smaller role for the authoritarian, ‘nanny knows best’ state, in favour of a substantive local bureacracy.

On immigration, I’m consistently anti. Despite my wife being the fruit of recent British immigrants, I would put a stop to all but a trickle and ensure British jobs for British workers, first and foremost. My wife, unsurprisingly, shares pretty much the same views. We’d also like to see an end to meaningless hyphenated labels such as Asian-British and British-Bengali etc., as well as an end to ethnicicity questionnaires, race relations councils and all the other insulting racism of low expectations/different standards manifestations in the UK.

There should also be, rather than a tax credit system, a tax rebate system that incentivised raising children responsibly and tax breaks for married persons.

I’d bring back the death penalty for offences such as drug smuggling, first degree murder, people trafficking and honour-based violence. Taking little girls out of the country and forcing them to marry their cousins would be punished severely.

I’d like to see more language learning encouraged in the UK: languages like Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, Sindhi would be open to all children, not just the preserve of the multiculturalists who, in cahoots with pushy parents, force children of immigrants to learn these languages against their will. Pupils would receive extra credit for taking ‘exotic’ languages at GCSE and A-Level.

A system of Commonwealth exchanges for students should be set up and a more substantive relationship developed with the countries of the Commonwealth. Every Chinese and Indian student studying in the UK would require two places for British students at university in each country respectively.

Gambling would be outlawed or taxed at 100%.

Powellism meets SOASism meets Gaitskellism

“I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger.”
Muhammad Ali.

You may note that may people, the white working/unemployed class think the same thing about the BNP. The Guardian may think that no opposes ’social justice’, via affirmative action and an ‘ethical foreign policy’ that allows immigration by travel; but the peasants are revolting.

Joseph ‘As a black man… I cannot be racist’ Harker is as a big a boost for the BNP as Griffin.

Edmund,

Marko Attila Hoare has some great insights where the political fault lines fall these days.

http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/it-is-no-longer-left-vs-right-but-pro-western-vs-anti-western/

Dave T, have a read of this:-

http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/it-is-no-longer-left-vs-right-but-pro-western-vs-anti-western/

Just read the piece from the lofty academic:

The diagram immediately rang alarm bells:

The ‘Pro-sovereignty right’ are somehow anti-Western…of course! But then this is a man who believes a loony with a penchant for the abusive term Islamofascist interviewed Sabry al-Banna and gets his information on the Arabic-speaking world from someone who doesn’t speak Arabic.

And its no surprise that No-Borders supporting, anti-fa, piss-reeking donkey jacket clad kooks such as Andrew above find favour with the lofty academic’s post.

Those who continue to talk about abolishing either capitalism or the welfare state are the political equivalent of flat-earthers.

I’ve never heard anyone talk of abolishing the welfare state, but reform is long, long overdue. Ian Duncan-Smith and the Centre for Social Justice, Frank Field…all have superb pragmatic solutions for the great folly that has been the greatest betrayal ever exacted on a people…needless to say, none of their ideas mention ‘abolition’.

and with Christian fundamentalists against Muslim fundamentalists in support of intervention in Iraq.

Hardly a fair comparison. Fundamentalism in Islam and Christianity mean totally different things. Numbers are also misleading.

Lofty academic’s prejudice towards EUphobes and genuine patriots also shines through…as does his likely Blue Labour support for Cameron, Gove, Maude and co.

‘But then this is a man who believes a loony with a penchant for the abusive term Islamofascist interviewed Sabry al-Banna and gets his information on the Arabic-speaking world from someone who doesn’t speak Arabic.’

I have genuinely no idea what this is a reference to.

I think, Crackpot, that you’re taking me to task over details, without contesting the essence, which is that the ‘left vs right’ divide is no longer the essential divide in world politics, and is in fact increasingly unimportant.

It seems that Edmund Standing, coming from a political standpoint very different from mine, has nevertheless reached essentially the same conclusion as I have on this question. I suspect an increasing number of people, from different political traditions, will be reaching this conclusion.

Describing the BNP as ‘far-right’ may be convenient short-hand, but it should more accurately be described as an extremist synthesis of right and left.

Some views are intrinsically left-wing or right-wing. Differences over mass immigration, gay marriage, public ownership vs privatisation, secularism, redistributive taxation etc. are differences of left vs right. But these aren’t issues over which Labour and the Tories are bitterly divided.

On the other hand, support for military intervention abroad is neither left wing nor right wing. The Iraq War was supported by the mainstream Labour and Conservative parties but opposed by a coalition that embraced the far left and far right as well as a large section of moderate opinion. The division over the Iraq War was much more bitter than over any left vs right issue in recent years.

PS I’m a strong supporter of mass immigration. The London I grew up in, in which large numbers of foreigners speaking different languages and practising different religions were arriving all the time, is the only one I’m comfortable with. In my inner-London comprehensive, the children spoke 51 different first languages. I’d consider any attempt to curtail this immigration to be an attack on my city, culture and heritage.

British jobs should go to whoever does them best. If an immigrant does a job better than a native, the immigrant should get the job.

If this leads to a certain section of Labour and Tory voters defecting to the BNP – fine, let them. I wouldn’t want them voting for the same party as me, anyway.

Back to basics, the left/right metaphor, IIRC derives from the French Parliaments, with the Aristocracy on the right hand of the King, and the commoners on the left. From it’s beginning, it had a clear class component, the righjt conservative (anti-democracy, pro-authority/monarchy/aristocracy) and later nationalistic and militaristic. The left libertarian, anti-authoritarian, internationalistic and pacifistic (in liberal terms this meant something otehr than Quaker pacifism).

Thus, in the US, the main partioes are both essentially Liberal parties, with the Democrats initially representing the traditional elite, and the Republicans as the insurgent party (although, the Dems, under Jackson, were obviously in worldwide terms, left).

As society has evolved, the aristocratic elite has declined in power, the Tories are slowly morphing into a liberal party – i.e. everyone has moved left. The liberals and lefts are becoming the new establishment (hegemon), and the forces around the old establishment are being forced into rhetoric and strategies of outsider groups (Conservative revolution, anyone?).

Within the liberal forces, we have the traditional division between supporters of finance capital and industrial capital (it is the BNPs preference for the latter that gives them their “left” sounding flavour). Even this has been ameliorated of later.

I think we’d all have to admit, after what happened in Germany, the Sovbloc, China, Cambodia etc. in the 20th century, that getting rid of Theism doesn’t actually solve all our problems.

Err, no. Socbloc, China, Cambodia were ’shining’ examples of theism in action, with the gods being Marx, Pol Pot instead of Yahweh. Since all gods are man-made anyway, what happened was the logical conclusion of theism.

Shameless plug

http://thesocialrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/02/tennis-courts-say-much.html

Left v right is a conceptual difference that anything to do with economics. It is how we view society and change

Marko Attila Hoares position of supporting “mass immigration”is irresponsible. Notwithstanding the the increased economic pressure it will put on many, more often than not , those who can least afford it, it is a deliberate challenge to the idea that British identity has any validity. The irony is that whilst the British are being are asked to have their culture replaced with multi cultures..(…we’re even asked to celebrate it for God’s sake),..those incoming cultures are expected to be able to maintain theirs . Apparently a curtailing of immigration would be an attack on the culture of his London, but that is the same argument of those who don’t want mass immigration. My father recently went back to London, the first time in decades, to where he was born and grew up until his mid 20’s. It was almost completely unrecognisable to him. His cultural roots and history have been obliterated by those advocates of mass immigration.. Mr Hoares position is, unwittingly a manifesto for increasing support for the BNP.

‘Marko Attila Hoares position of supporting “mass immigration”is irresponsible. Notwithstanding the the increased economic pressure it will put on many, more often than not , those who can least afford it, it is a deliberate challenge to the idea that British identity has any validity.’

It might be a challenge to your version of British identity. It’s not a challenge to mine. Who says British identity has to be purely white, Anglo-Saxon and Christian anyway ?

Long live multiethnic Britain !

How many would join up if this country were to get into an old fashioned war? I suspect very few Muslims, and very few Trots. And the metropolitan elite? I suspect they would prefer to cheer from the sidelines and poke cameras in the faces of those getting killed. You have your British identity right there.

Israeli soldier to young Rabbi: You pray for us, we die for you

It might be a challenge to your version of British identity. It’s not a challenge to mine. Who says British identity has to be purely white, Anglo-Saxon and Christian anyway ?

Well said Marko, who exactly are these people who are telling us that we must live in a “Britain” that some of us would not recognise anyway?

Albania is really very much a law unto itself. That and its national religion being Albanianism (or whatever the exact expression is)

Edhe mos shikoni kisha e xhamia, feja e shqyptarit asht shqyptaria

(Don’t look to the church or the mosque, the faith of the Albanian is Albanianism)

“Well said Marko, who exactly are these people who are telling us that we must live in a “Britain” that some of us would not recognise anyway?”

That would be most of the British population, who unlike you metropolitan chatterati have no wish to live in the multicultural swamp that people like you seem hell-bent on creating for them.

Just for the record, Hoare, do you support mass immigration everywhere? Should the Koreans throw open their doors to the Somalis and Pakistanis? How can the Indians not see how much better off they’d be with a few tens of millions of Congolese or Haitians? Or is just western societies that need “enriching”?

Reading the crap uttered by people like Hoare almost makes me wish I’d voted BNP yesterday.

Marko:

“Who says British identity has to be purely white, Anglo-Saxon and Christian anyway ?

Long live multiethnic Britain !”

It isn’t about being white, or Anglo-Saxon, or Christian. It’s about primarily numbers, and the values and committment of the people coming in, to the society they are joining.

We have this closed system of mutual aid, which we call the welfare state. In so far as it works at all, it works in a state of dynamic equilibrium.
We also have a market in jobs, goods and services, which also operates in a state of dynamic equilibrium.
Systems like that don’t react well to overloads. They can only cope with gradual incremental change.

Finally, you obviously don’t like nations, and would rather they didn’t exist. But they do, and this is one.

That would be most of the British population

ho ho ho and let me guess – you are their representative.

Most of the British population live in metropolitan areas you moronic individual.

‘Reading the crap uttered by people like Hoare almost makes me wish I’d voted BNP yesterday.’

Thank you, Dave, at least you’re being honest about where your true sympathies lie. People like you should vote BNP, because that is the party that upholds your values.

‘Just for the record, Hoare, do you support mass immigration everywhere?’

Yes.

The fragile volk is threatened by them Micheal Jackson Socialites, to the grey accordians en masse

‘Finally, you obviously don’t like nations, and would rather they didn’t exist.’

I like nations; I just don’t like racism or racial purity.

I have genuinely no idea what this is a reference to.

Me neither. As the fictionalised interview never took place anyway.

It might be a challenge to your version of British identity. It’s not a challenge to mine. Who says British identity has to be purely white, Anglo-Saxon and Christian anyway ?

Who said anything about a white, Anglo-Saxon and Christian identity? Rintintin never mentioned it…

Well said Marko, who exactly are these people who are telling us that we must live in a “Britain” that some of us would not recognise anyway?

As usual Graham the consummate toady gets confused: in my experience it’s official diversitycrat policy to remind Britons that we live in a multicultural, multiethnic, multifaith society, despite that not being the experience of most Britons. We are often told ad nauseum by inhabitants of Brobdingnag and the high priests of ideological multiculturalism that we must ‘celebrate diversity…or else’.

Well, how about ‘what if’ instead ‘we must’ for a change?

Marko Atilla Hoare..”It might be a challenge to your version of British identity. It’s not a challenge to mine. Who says British identity has to be purely white, Anglo-Saxon and Christian anyway ?”

Where did I say that?….

My point was that YOUR defense of your community and your relationship with place ( London) , is exactly the same argument that the BNP would use.
I’m not promoting the idea that Britain should be “purely white , Anglo saxon and Christian.” I’m not sure what Briish identity is, but I do know that it’s up for grabs depending on the political axe you have to grind. You might be like Internationalist and believe that the idea of British identity is “cobblers” , in which case , all cultural identities are equally bogus, whether it’s the British, the Basques, the Apache the Palestinians etc..or you might be the stereotypical little Englander that you obviously think I am. In terms of MY sense of British identity, it’s got very little to do with ethnicity and a lot to do with cultural identity…which is why I’m quite happy with a cosmopolitan culture but not MultiCulturalsim, as I believe it’s recipe for the “Balkanisation” of our country.

Someone/ Crackpot:

in my experience it’s official diversitycrat policy to remind Britons that we live in a multicultural, multiethnic, multifaith society

And where does this “official policy” come from (outside your own imagination of course?)

We are often told ad nauseum by inhabitants of Brobdingnag and the high priests of ideological multiculturalism that we must ‘celebrate diversity…or else’.

You sure chose the right screename this time Crackpot!

I don’t recognise the Britain of your father (and nor would you.) Live in the real world for once and leave your onanist fantasy world at your bedroom door.

‘Just for the record, Hoare, do you support mass immigration everywhere?’

Yes.

Oh dear. He’s a No Borders loon…barking extremists one and all.

Someone/ Crackpot

Wrong! Someone near Oxford appears to be on holiday…

I am the one responsible for the very very right wing my dear, and you have taken it entirely out of context.

I referred to your acceptance of the Lind.Buchannan thesis that academic post modernism, and all liberal progressive reforms in the west (abortion, sexual equality, homosexuality) etc are cultural marxism invented by the Frankfurt school.

As a graduate of ‘critical and cultural studies’ I can’t belief you believe this.

Post modern is highly liberal but not at all marxist, rather it is an anomic libertarian liberalism te product of free floating late capitalism that just happens to have a childish hatred of white heterosexual men (in practice just white men).

It is very very right wing (of a paleo conservative kind) to collapse all of liberalism into communism in an extreme culture war.

I approve of your anti-racism (though I find the endless the BNP are racists a wee bit patronising) and your views on immigration.

I oppose your views on the EU.

In theory a position on homosexuality should be politically neutral.

Libertarians should not oppose homosexual equality. Morgoth is however one of the few right wing libertarians (he has liberal soft state tendencies however) I have encountered who is consistent on this.

In the US the only Libertarians I have ever encountered who are not opposed to Homosexuality are the gay ones.

My general point to you is less one of a right left spectrum but of the necessity to be hyper alert to the ethno-cultural (ethnos) dimension of nationalism compared to the civi-political dimension of nationalism (demos).

This is also a spectrum that has a tangential relation to a political spectrum.

So right wing ethno-cultural nationalists are more likely to be racistly anti-immigrant, traditionaly religious (in its cultural observant aspect rather than an inner spiritual one) and homophobic.

I have allways seen a grid with the vertical axis being (top to bottom) individualist>collectivist and the horizontal axis being obviously enough, left>right.

On this grid you can still plot most contemporary political formations including No2EU.

actually a 3d grid (hard to draw with a nationalist spectrum might help although this does rahther reflect ethno-cultural nationalism= collectivist vs civic-political nationalist individualist.

The paradox is that the individual civic and political rights of political nationalism can only come from a strong sovereing state.

Ethno-cultural nationalism places sovereignty in ethnicity (or more extremely in blood) and can be seen as the descendent of the clan or tribal notion of sovereign polity.

It is this ethno-cultural nationalism that explains how someone can claim to be a libertarian and is deeply opposed to the state and its functions but is traditionally or fundamentalistically religious and opposed to gender and sexual equality.

I am extremely grateful for you for having this debate because i have been wrestling with your texts thinking but who is he and what does he believe (proving for methe problem of post modernism that most of what is important politically and culturally is pre or non or para textual and not available for textual analysis).

My attempt at plotting of course can only position an idea or practice or ideology, it tells me little about an individual.

We are all internal pluralities and the totality of our views should not be so neatly pigeon holeable (though we can try it with our individual views and surprise ourselves).

I like you much more as a man whose blog wages war on the far left and then votes (as protest) for a far left party.

This shows a real person alive to the real contradictions of politics and culture.

If they brings up spittle based activities in comments, it’s dear NO

Marko, mass immigration into any nation state is bound to smash up the existing culture. I don’t want that to happen to anyone. Why do you?

Monty, the existing culture in London is the product, in large part, of mass immigration. London without large numbers of Indians, Bangladeshis, Chinese, Jamaicans, Poles, Greeks, Turks, Portuguese, Arabs, Jews, Somalis, Nigerians, Irish, etc. would not be the culturally vibrant, exciting place that it is; it would not be the citythat I grew up in.

A racially, culturally uniform Britain is not a Britain that I would want to live in.

It was Orwell who said (cant remember the exact passage) that although communism and fascism are both totalitarian ideologies, communism is inherently more attractive ideologically, because it is supposedly founded upon principles of equality. Fascism’s the exact opposite as it is founded upon the exclusion of people from society. So, although they are both totalitarian, communism is more attractive than fascism for the idealist.

Also, was it just me, or did anyone else find it uncomfortable that ‘British National Party’ was at the top of the ballot sheet? I know it’s done alphabetical order, but still.

Is No2EU running across Europe or just in Britain?

Left and Right are OK terms, I suppose, because they refer to ways of running capitalism.

Left and Right arose, IIRC, because of where people sat in the post-revolutionary French parliament.

Socialists are neither left or right because we stand for the abolition of capitalism. That doesn’t fit in on your graphs or whatever.

Marko Attila Hoare

I don’t wish you to misunderstand me, as we have had a dispute about ethnicity before, but a fuller picture than the one you give is necessary.

I do not question for a moment your status as a Brit or a Londoner but you are also lucky enough to have a dual (or multiple) cultural and ethnic background (I don’t know whether you are a first or 2nd generation migrant, it makes some difference in relation to integration).

Marko is a Croation name and Attila (your grandfather’s name0 is common in Hungary and Turkey.

I believe you speak fluent serbo-croat and possibly other languages as well.

But tell me of the religions around you at school, how many of them do you practice?

Of the 51 languages spoken in your school, how many of them do you now speak?

You see, you did not learn or absorb a multiculturalism from your peers, though you were in a similar position to them vis a vis the host society.

You are fortunate to have middle class parents who had ambitions for their son and knew them to be acheivable. You are also white and it would be dishonest of us to pretend that does not make a difference.

Britain is and has always been a multiethnic and multicultural country.

Those who say ah yes but we are all mongrels so ethnic origins do not matter, miss part of the point.

Ethnicity does matter and the very fact that six non English indigenous languages are still spoken in these Isles attests to the fact that the long centuries of social and sexual mixing have not eradicated distinct ethnic and cultural traditions.

I belong to a minority ethnic community a vestige of a previous majority, whose language which has had a negligable influence on English attests not to integration and assimilation (other than genetic replacement or admixture) but to cultural and ethnic replacement.

Belonging to this minority has been a source of stigma and pride.

I intrinsically do not like nationalism having grown up in a nationalist household, i did not like the irrationality of ethnic preference over fairness or equality.

I have a terrible confession to make. I have a visceral hatred of the English.

I only discovered this by accident lifting weights with an Irish friend. As all athletes know to push yourself beyond your limits (our muscles have a ceiling at about 70% of our actual capacity for safety) like a mother lifting a car to save a child, you need to channel arousal and anger to push yourself.

My Irish friend told me to shout at him ‘fucking english say Fucking English do it’. I was amused thinking he meant it as a joke so I did and he pushed beyond his capacity.

He was way beyond me in ability and inisted I had not grasped the mental focus needed yet.

My turn and he shouts ‘your a fucking Celt, say fucking English, fucking do it’. I am ashamed to say it worked, well.

It was purely visceral fed me to me apparently with my Mother’s milk, it lies deep.

As a result I feel I understand something about ethnic conflict about how neighbours can slit each others throats, that I wish I didn’t.

Now my problem with this ethnic nationalism is that it is always to some extent made up confected from nationalist cultural myths.

Most of this European Ethnic nationalism is actually a result of the ‘vernacular’ folklorist nationalist movements that swept Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Benedict Anderson in Imagined communities (the essential book on this) relates how this was in part a ruling elite response to the progressive liberal nationalism of latin america earlier in the century.

Certainly when Hapsburg aristocrats started speaking in Magyar the language of Hungarian peasants, or irrish Earls learned irish and became nationalists, it allowed the old elite to remain in power throu gh the nationalist nation forming tidal wave.

I have an ancient ethnic name, a nationalist one, named after the Welsh prince to defeat the first Anglo-Saxon force across the river severn, noone had that name for centuries until Celtic revivalism.

Now genetically at leastin part I am a direct descendent of the pre Celtic (proto Basques) late palaeolithic peoples who first re-populated this land after the last ice age.

But so are 50-90% of people in the British isles.

I don’t have the results yet but I could easily be as much Anglo-Saxon or nordic (or something else entirely).

So I a multi ethnic Britain is fine if ethnicity is subordinate to nationality and a multi racial Britain is certainly acheivable and desirable.

A multi-cultural Britain is not acheivable simply because few individuals are multilingual and multi-cultural.

Even though a mutli-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multiracial existence has been the norm for my adult existence, i would not to seek to impose my sense of what I like and feel confortable with upon a nation, any nation.

Mass Immigration left to a laissez faire set of market and social forces cannot be good for most people either the host population or the incoming migrants, who have to struggle as the next wave undercutting the wage earning potential of the previous wave.

Furthermore I am increasingly sympathetic to monoglot monoculturals and especially the English working class, who because of their disadvantaged economic and educational status and lack of social capita have benefited least from mass immigration.

By denying that there is any downside to mass immigration Marko, and down playing the role of social class and economic background in the ability to profit from a mutli-ethnic environment you do a great disservice to the nation and to the waves of subsequent migrants who willl find less and less of a stable law abiding equal society to greet them.

One day even you will not be able to recognise the argot and body language and spirit of the age found among your ethnically diverse nation.

i have related the story before of how a friend of mine, a sociolinguist specialisng in crealoe and pidgin languages, had not been to London for 10 years and found the new argot ‘innit lahk’ almost incomprehensible.

he regaled me with all kinds of tehcnicalities about substrates and superstrates and admixtures and rate of language change factors.

The conclusion was that such a variant dialect occuring over such a short period of time in a single locality was only partly explain by the number of incomers with no language in common (whose parents did not speak English).

The dominant cause was rapidly increasing massive social inequality.

What I find impossible to reconcile Marko with your views 9and I wonder if you have ) is that on the one hand in the Balkans especially and elsewhere you seem to support the self dertermination of every ethnic group to form a nation along ethnic lines, what you could call multi nationalism, where you seem happy to support the break up of larger civic and political nationalist polities.

Yet here in Britain you support unchecked mass immigration of multiple ethnicities and cultures which should be subject to no management in the national interest, rather it should be left to what ever organic process of organisation and accomodation may occur, while inevitable conflict is held to be the result of racist nationalist forces(which you claim is a racist argument).

Yet such free movement and migration (that was allowed in the former Yugoslavia before it was captured by a racist Serb nationalism) would not be allowed in your newly independent ethno-nationalist nations,as indeed it is the mutli ethnic state they are explicitly denouncing and escaping from.

Don’t you see any contradiction? if not why not?

You may see it as culturally vibrant Marko. I see it as a dangerous collection of ghettos, in which these parallel ethnic groups cling together and ward eachother off as much as possible. Luckily for me, I do not have to live there.

Most of the population don’t want their towns, cities and lives turned upside down. They don’t even want their traditional old buildings knocked down, or their countryside turned into housing estates. And they certainly don’t want their traditional liberties curtailed. Folk want England to look and sound like England, and Scotland to look and sound like Scotland. What is wrong with that?

A racially, culturally uniform Britain is not a Britain that I would want to live in.

Does this man ever read comments or is he locked in an eternal solecistic dialectic with himself? Again, as Crackpot pointed out earlier on, nobody has used the words ‘racially, culturally uniform’ in the same context as Britain except YOU.

I don’t wish to live in a ‘racially, culturally uniform’ place either, but it’s becoming increasingly evident with each contribution that I’d be happier without your presence in the UK too…can’t you bog off and pester the racialist Caliph Saad of Sokoto in northern Nigeria, he’d love to have you (as his plaything)

Also, was it just me, or did anyone else find it uncomfortable that ‘British National Party’ was at the top of the ballot sheet? I know it’s done alphabetical order, but still.

I’d didn’t see a ballot as such, but I was mightily relieved that the Anti-fa Alliance and their smelly candidates didn’t make it either.

Is No2EU running across Europe or just in Britain?

Just in the UK, but I’m not sure they’re radical enough for you what with only some of their candidates having been arrested and no obvious balaclavas and skimasks on display. They have been known to clench their fists though if that helps…

For some reason, it became fashionable some years ago to assert the the UK is an entirely mongrel ethnic mix to begin with, and there is no culture here anyway apart from getting rat-arsed every Friday night, fighting at football matches, and shaming ourselves on TV reality shows.

There are 60 million of us. The vast majority fit none of the above stereotypes. And if there really were no underlying culture, the population would not be so angry and resentful about it being systematically trashed.

Seismic, what difference does it make?

Presumably, the ballot paper offered you a full slate of candidates with no-one missed off by accident?

Latest resignation from the cabinet- Hoon.

Metta.

I realise that your question is adressed to Marko and (as I have not advocated open borders) I will let him address the main points. But just to be clear on the subject of the Balkans I am not sure that it is true to say that anyone: seem(s) to support the self dertermination of every ethnic group to form a nation along ethnic lines. You may be weighted in your thinking by the example of Kosovo (which by 1995 was 92% Albanian) but I rather think that Marko and I would be thinking more of a “multicultural” city such as Sarajevo (an ideal defended by Croats, Muslims and indeed some Serbs) but which was seen by The hardline Serb nationalists that you mention (many of whom were not even from the big and more cosmopolitan Serbian cities such as Belgrade) as (if I can borrow a phrase): a dangerous collection of ghettos, in which these parallel ethnic groups cling together and ward eachother off as much as possible. Luckily for them they did not have to live there and could not imagine why any mongrel scum would want to do so and this no doubt helped salve consciences as they shelled the “mongrel” city from the hills which surround it.

‘You see, you did not learn or absorb a multiculturalism from your peers, though you were in a similar position to them vis a vis the host society.’

Yes, actually, I did. The food I eat and cook, restaurants I visit, music I listen to, weddings and festivals I go to, films I watch – all reflect the diversity of London, and indeed of a culture that stretches beyond national borders. It’s not a matter of ‘them’ absorbing ‘our’ culture and ‘us’ absorbing ‘their’ culture; we’re all children of the same, diverse, cosmopolitan, London cultural mix.

Christ, what would England be like without Indian and Chinese restaurants ? It doesn’t bear thinking about…

‘Don’t you see any contradiction? if not why not?’

Of course there is no contradiction. I support a multiethnic Croatia, multiethnic Bosnia, etc. Quite happy to see immigration increase to those countries, as well. Lord knows, it would do them good.

Equally, I entirely support the right of Scotland, Wales or England to secede from the UK, if that is what they want, just as I supported the right of the Yugoslav nations to secede.

‘but it’s becoming increasingly evident with each contribution that I’d be happier without your presence in the UK too’

First they came for the Jews.

Then they came for the Muslims.

Then they came for the immigrants.

Then they came for me…

Graham

Accepted but the multicultural city of Sarajevo (cleansed of its Jews many ladino speaking, with the assistence of Amin al -Husseini and his largely Bosnian Muslim 30,000 Waffen SS Panzer division who also targetted Serbs) is hardly the norm for the dismembering of the former Yugoslavia which was carried out on ethnic criteria even though in many cases only the religion of ones parents or grandparents could give a determination on what ‘ethnicity’ a person belonged too’.

Now even though my personal position (unfortunately the only time I agreed with Margaret Thatcher) was to arm the Muslims and bomb the serbs at the outset, I am painfully aware of the ambiguity of defending a group persecuted along ethnic lines when the only way to do so is to help them establish an ethnically based polity that may then become ethnic persecuters.

Obviously at the time both Bosniaks and Kosovars where victims of Serb aggresssion so the decision to support them was easy but not simple.

The resultant Bosniak state being a tri federal entity with a balancing of powers and ethnic interests is a democracy (though with an entirely new islamist strand in its makeip).

Kosovo so my field experienced friends assured me was always going to be harder to establish as a functioning state.

Currently it seems to be descending into an Islamizing Saudi backed, ethnic Muslim state, not a great outcome.

There was no compelling reason for the dissolution of Checkoslovakia other than the ethno-nationalist intransigence of a political faction.

Hungary’s claims to transylvania cannot be met without dismembering Romania, but they press these claims as if it won’t encourage Serbia’s claims against Hungary.

I see no reason for the maintenance of a Moldava from Romania other than aan attachment to Cyrrillic but I have no doubt that Moldavans could give me thousands of reasons while accusing me of ignorance (true) and ethnic prejudice (pull the other one).

This was the same point I raised with Peter Thatchell below on the difficulty of supporting a Baluch independence movement (even if secular and democratic) when the resultant state would necessarily become an ethnic state with political sovereignty and power lying wit clan groupings.

Probably most people would support Timor Leste’s self determination and independence from the brutal millitary occupation, but I know quite a bit about this place and there has already been an attempted coup by the dominant ethnic group.

Not only have most Indonesians left but the generation of Timorese who have not learned Portugese or Teton but Indonesian (now banned as a national language) are discriminated against by the generation of guerillas and exiles.

I like being a mongrel, my dog is a mongrel and so is my cat. I think we are exotic hybrid’s and what is most interesting about us is our hybridity.

But unlike post modernists I don’t think identity is a simple excercise in performativity.

Some of a human groups strongest bonds are of attachments to their group and attachment to a place where they grew up and which they feel is theirs.

Culture enables people to interact meaningfully with strangers according to a set of shared rules, it generates a social morality.

We subject these bonds to rapid unchecked destabilising forces (of which immigration is but one) at the risk of grave peril to the fabric of society.

Given the age of human society and the diversity of languages and cultures and the evidence of previous mass migrations, invasions and demographic and technological change have you ever wondered why there are so few examples of multicultural states?

In fact when you investigate more closely those examples they are not robust and they were never without serious ethnic conflict.

I can accept that some people have a personal prediliction for linguistic and cultural pluralism (I am one of them) what I cannot accept is that personal preference be held up as a normative requirement.

Related to that is how personally pissed off I become when my years of anthropological experience and historical and social enquiry into investigating the multi-culturalism that never has been, that my informed opinion that a demand that the state be kept on a direction to an unachievable and destructive goal is dismissed as some form of racist aversion to foreigners and a preference for white Anglo-Saxon purity.

Metta.

I don’t have time now for a long answer on the question of establishing new states on ethnic grounds, and would have to ask how much you think that the supposed “Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes” was ever anything other than a Serb-controlled entity anyway… but can I just say that in response to your claim that:

Some of a human groups strongest bonds are of attachments to their group and attachment to a place where they grew up and which they feel is theirs.

That you are not safe from the whims of politicians to destroy the streets and parks which you are attached too in any kind of state. How many people were moved in order to build the 86 acres of Canary Wharf for instance? How many memories destroyed?

To live in cities is to have to get used to change on grand scales and the arrival of people from other parts of the world is one of the least unnerving of such changes.

Marko:

“Yes, actually, I did. The food I eat and cook, restaurants I visit, music I listen to, weddings and festivals I go to, ”

Why do people like you always expect your own idiosyncracies to prevail over the national interest?

Flint- gone.

I can see absolutely no reason why my comment above is in the moderation queue….

Marko

I really cannot believe that you talk of Restaraunts and Food.

Is that it? Is that your sole grasp of what a culture is, your outsiders view of the bits you can shop for or dip into as a tourist?

iI you cannot name one negative aspect of mass immigration then you are blind to reality and are having a conversation with yourself.

If you really think mass immigration with no borders and no limits is sustainable then you are a cultural and social illiterate and need to do an awful lot of reading.

I really don’t want to be rude and I do agree with the Balkan expert Marko.

its really difficult because I don’t think I have often encountered such poorly informed views on the on the issue, such a refusal to even entertain a counter argument for the sake of intellectual fairness, honesty and enquiry.

But you know what?

Your view of the London that you grew up in and the London you want to keep and can’t imagine living without. The London that roots your sense of your cultural identity, is exactly the same desire the same sense of meaning, the same sense of right and entitlement to keep the place you grew up a place you recognise, as the old east ender who cries when they revisit a place they were born they cannot recognise.

If your preferred policies continue, you will be a stranger to the place you grew up (if you can even walk there safely without a guard during daylight and not at all after dark).

If the area you grew up in one day speaks 300 or 3000 languages and consists of burned out buildings and heavily armed gangs, If there are no free public schools, libraries or hospitals and the parks have become shanty towns and no go areas, then I can assure you you will feel an aching sense of loss and of sadness, and you will want it all to stop but it will be too late.

I hope you will have abandoned your anomic individualist liberalism and will know what your feeling is caused by.

You are politically a liberal individualist who like diversity for the no cost cultural amusements and distractions it offers you, along with the currently fashionable academic Kudos you gain for your views.

If you actually consider that there are any negative aspects to mass immigration you think it will be like your childhood (which was nothing like the mass immigration of the last 10 years by the way) and that you will escape it effects, but you wont..

You evidently care more about diversity than about social equality or community cohesion.

This thread demonstrates perfectly how the real politcal split now is not between left and right but between idnividualist liberals vs communitarians.

I am not a populist but I fall with the majority of British people at the communitarian end of the spectrum.

Glenys Kinnock elevated to all that money in the House of Lords.

Why do people like you always expect your own idiosyncracies to prevail over the national interest?

This is not idiosyncratic. This IS the identity of those of us born and brought up in places where we were encouraged to respect those from other cultures.

To turn the clock back you will have to deport (or shoot) us as well as anyone you pick out as an “immigrant” (no doubt based on your idiosyncracies)

I rather suspect that shooting us will give you as much pleasure as reigning down shells on Sarajevo did to Ratko Mladic…

If the area you grew up in one day speaks 300 or 3000 languages and consists of burned out buildings and heavily armed gangs, If there are no free public schools, libraries or hospitals and the parks have become shanty towns and no go areas, then I can assure you you will feel an aching sense of loss and of sadness, and you will want it all to stop but it will be too late.

You mean if they are returned roughly to the way cities were in the late 18th century/early 19th (not so long agao) when factory owners were prepared to bring in labour from anywhere and have them live in “rookeries” without amenities and the rule of law?

The answer (no doubt derided as the destruction of memories by some at the time) is the “municipal socialism” of Jospeh Chamberlain which built the squares, libraries and cultural institutes and provided the gas and electricty which we have now. The answer is NOT a self-selected bunch of “pure” Brits going along a line and picking out those they don’t like on the basis of nose-size, phrenology or pigmentation…

I don’t want to turn the clock back Graham. I want to stop people like you, fast forwarding it all over England.

We don’t all want what you want. And there is no law that says we have to.

I don’t want to turn the clock back Graham. I want to stop people like you, fast forwarding it all over England.

Well if you want to stop progress you will have to shoot a whole lot of us.

We don’t all want what you want.

You have absolutely no idea what I want.

Graham

Time and again research shows that the more diverse a society is the lower the levels of mutual trust and mutual involvement are.

My most insistent point as a person who flatters himself in understanding numbers, is that all the arguments I am presented with act as if numbers of immigrants not only don’t matter, but to suggest that it is a numbers game is itself some kind of racist opposition to immigration.

To say that I can have no kind of say in the affairs of my community in many different political systems does not detract from the fact that in a real democracy I should.

Let us consider the Iceland question. This is not a thought experiment but a real country with a strong degree of social and cultural homogeneity (geneticallly the Icelandics are 85% Norse and 16% Celtic, the sagas report on taking slave women from Britain are true).

The use of surnames are discouraged as this indicates a vestigial class ethnic distinction of Norwegian origins.

Names appear as Christian names in Icelandic telephone books.

Many members of a family end up with different names (via the son or dotter suffix convention to their maternal or paternal Christian names).

There are the highest levels of social involvement and trust and democratic participation.

There was a February Coup as the gangsters who had wrecked the economy (seriously threatening total collapse) were unseated by a few vehicles parked at the Airport and some very angry waving of fists and quite a lot of shouting.

Now here’s the question out of a total population of 300,000 do you think Iceland could take as a percentage in immigration and still remain iceland, 1%, 10% or no limit as Marko proposes.

Now i would say the exact annual limit would depend on various social economic and cultural factors.

Foreigners naturalising must take icelandic names and must be able to speak fluent icelandic (not terribly easy).

I have been told that this is racist of the Icelandics.

Bullshit, given that Iceland does everything to integrate immigrants as fully functioning equal members of Icelandic society these are basic preconditions of social participation social support and social truat from ones neighbours.

I would say that 10% is too high as a quota and that 300-700 is more likely a reasonable and proportionate number.

The existence of a limit is in the best interests of the social cohesion of the host society and the social integratability of the migrants.

Seen like this it has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with social equality (diversity is not a free standing public good in my view).

Marko would be happy to obliterate iceland on the grounds that it would be good for the white racially pure racists. I think this is misinformed , deluded or dishonest.

I have never had a proponent of unlimited immigration answer me the Icelandic question (or the Bhutan question we know what China has done to Tibet) ever, they refuse and engage in whatabouttery.

I am not prepared to see the destruction of Icelandic culture and society.

I do not wish to see the world become a free floating world of capital where the third world loses its geographical location and becomes a part of all our world global city states, where individuals barely exist though they are sorted according to ethnicities as real as ‘I can’t believe its not butter’ with all real the social cohesion of a Bennetton ad.

Such a world would actually have no real autonomous and authentic cultures left.

It would simply be a multicultural flavou.

‘One tall skinny latte with a squeeze of Ladakhi and a little Buddhism sprinkled on top than you.’

Metta, I absolutely agree with your comments. I think Marko’s view of multicultural life is just trivial, self centred. Like a little girl playing with her dolls in national dress, who then just puts them away when they have served their transient purpose.

Graham:

“Well if you want to stop progress you will have to shoot a whole lot of us.”

Is that because you feel no need to take heed of the democratically expressed views of local communities?

You will stamp on us? And if we want to stand up for our rights we will have to shoot you? Really?

Graham

‘You mean if they are returned roughly to the way cities were in the late 18th century/early 19th (not so long agao) when factory owners were prepared to bring in labour from anywhere and have them live in “rookeries” without amenities and the rule of law?’

Yes exactly like that, and in my lifetime I have seen it happen to several places in the world.

I am not saying immigration causes this. I am saying that mass immigration must necessarily in Britain contribute to the social and political forces that will produce this.

Communalism I have seen do this. I was in Sri Lanka when the civil war kicked of. at that time it was a wealthy dynamic country trying its best to be an Asian Tiger its per capita GDP higher than Indias, now its a basket case.

‘The answer (no doubt derided as the destruction of memories by some at the time) is the “municipal socialism” of Jospeh Chamberlain which built the squares, libraries and cultural institutes and provided the gas and electricty which we have now.’

Agreed (but this is not a politics shared by your mass immigrationist check it out as a personal research project).

‘The answer is NOT a self-selected bunch of “pure” Brits going along a line and picking out those they don’t like on the basis of nose-size, phrenology or pigmentation…’

For you that is low really fucking low. have I ever, ever said anything like that ever?

Please take that remark back at once or indicate that it was not intended at me (even though you quote me and directly respon to my comment).

The problem is that no-one on this thread has said anything so hideously racist and it is low to suggest they have.

You know this is what fucks me off about this.

It really is like discussing paedophilia. Well I am really tired of being accused of interfering with kiddies as are so many people who question the merit or sanity of unchecked immigration with no criteria that either make it transparent, fair and non racially discriminatory for applicants, and are perfectly explicable to the reason and general non racism of the majority of the public.

These accusations of witchcraft imperil the great gains in confronting racism that have been made in Britain. gains I would say that were greatest when they came out of organised labour and confronted Racism and fought for equal treatment.

The whole agenda has been fucked since elitist liberals got hold of racism as the mechanism to maintain their powers of patronage and turned it into cultural sensitivity and multiculturalism ‘the colours, the food, the restaurants’.

I find it extraordinary that people feel entitled to make such accusations of bestiality and paedophilia against people they disagree with.

I’m bored and tired. I’m gonna go now. I have Turkish lessons and with luck it will be followed by a Turkish meal and with even better luck a doggy bag and a Turk to take home.

Mettaculture,

If being ‘well informed’ means wanting to keep out dark-skinned people who speak funny languages, and lining up behind the BNP and Daily Mail on the immigration issue, then I’m very proud to be poorly informed. You do always try to side-step the debate by simply asserting that you know best and know most, first about issues of class, and now about issues of race. But unfortunately, I’m just not impressed by your claims at expertise, as they don’t seem to rest on any actual evidence.

‘Your view of the London that you grew up in and the London you want to keep and can’t imagine living without. The London that roots your sense of your cultural identity, is exactly the same desire the same sense of meaning, the same sense of right and entitlement to keep the place you grew up a place you recognise, as the old east ender who cries when they revisit a place they were born they cannot recognise.’

So now I’m a communitarian ? I thought I was an atomised liberal. Surely, with all your incredible philosophical sophistication and unrivalled knowledge, you can make your mind up.

I don’t support open borders. We have mass immigration. We don’t have open borders. The two are not the same. Realistically, even a liberal immigration regime has to involve some degree of regulation and border controls.

You can dress all this anti-immigrant hysteria up in egalitarian or ‘communitarian’ clothes all you want; it’s just xenophobia and fear of change.

What he said….

I meant Metta of course

I voted for No2EU – Yes To Democracy, too. Yes, Commies and Trots. But not exclusively so. It’s a start, what with the immediate past Leader of the Liberal Party, the leaders of the Visteon and the Lindsey oil refinery workers (top of the lists in the East Midlands and in Yorkshire & The Humber), and Peter Shore’s old agent. Now they just need to lose the Commies and the Trots. Or at least, initially, stop putting themn at the tops of list. A lesson learned this time, one trusts.

Peter Shore, eh? Worked with the Hard Left where necessary. But chaired the Solidarity Group. Denounced the Major Government for scrapping the Royal Yacht. Supported the Canadian rather than the Spanish fishermen not least because Canada and the United Kingdom shared a Head of State. And much else besides.

With him (and his running mate, Gwyneth Dunwoody) dead, with David Stoddart extremely old, with Frank Field getting on a bit, and with Kate Hoey not far behind, who is the next in line? Whoever it is was yesterday voted for No2EU – Yes To Democracy.

And Nigel Farage can pull the other one. If No2EU – Yes To Democracy has done better than expected, then it won’t be because the Old Labour half of UKIP’s previous vote is too thick to work out when a piece of paper has been folded. But thanks for letting us know what you really think, Nigel.

Is that because you feel no need to take heed of the democratically expressed views of local communities?

I rather think that you are so wedded to the idea of a conspiracy of metropolitan “multi-cultis” who are determined to replace nuns cycling to church on misty mornings with Burkha-clad lesbian motorcylcists that you have come to rely on thinking that anyone you are arguing with online is powerful enough to ride roughshod over democracy (this is quite funny really.) I feel it is unlikely (based on a study of any history anywhere ever) that things will stay the same or that clocks will be turned back successfully but I really do feel that faced with change your sort usually find a scapegoat.

For you that is low really fucking low. have I ever, ever said anything like that ever?

I don’t for a moment think that you would indulge in such things Metta. In fact I don’t think that you would even entertain such thoughts. I had no thought of burning you as a witch and rather suspected that you would be inclined (as you confirm) to seek answers in the positive deeds of the past such as Chamberlain’s rather than the negative ones. But I am arguing here with more than one person and experience on HP teaches me that many who comment here would just love to be in a position where they were picking out the untermenschen for deportation.

I am not against immigration controls, but it is (to me anyway) the overcrowding of cities (and particularly the dictatorship of traffic) which are the (not insurmountable) problems which we face rather than the arrival of people from different parts of the world. The easy answer is to find scapegoats, the hard part is to rebuild municipalities to cater for the (post) modern world.

I can quite understand Metta’s stance on this, and he has every right to be angry.

Graham, and Marko, are effectively setting themselves up as arbiters of which views of the UK are, and are not acceptable. And anyone deemed to fall short of their self imposed fatuous criteria, must be declared to be carbon copies of Eichmann.

Meanwhile their own personal contribution to social cohesion, and fellowship in this land, is tipping a waiter in Soho, and feeling good about your broadminded, overfed, selves.

It all makes me wonder how dirty you guys are prepared to get.

I am not saying immigration causes this. I am saying that mass immigration must necessarily in Britain contribute to the social and political forces that will produce this.

We really are not far apart, I am even amenable to listening to your argument about elitist liberals getting hold of anti-racism to maintain their own position. But those of us who are not (by any stretch of the imagination) elitist liberals still have as much right (and I would suggest a much more defensible position) when we say that we are the children of cultural change and that societies move onward as those who would take us back not to some identified time in the past but to a 21st century version of what they feel the past was like based on watching old episodes of Z cars.

Graham, and Marko, are effectively setting themselves up as arbiters of which views of the UK are, and are not acceptable. And anyone deemed to fall short of their self imposed fatuous criteria, must be declared to be carbon copies of Eichmann.

Who has said that your view is “unnaceptable”? I have merely pointed out that the world will move on anyway. It is called “arguing”. Eichmann (a mere functionary) is a strange (and silly) choice to which to compare anyone who disagrees with you on a website. I can only think that you have learnt your commenting technique from Dr Goebbels.

Marko

I am an anthropologist by training and have conducted extensive fieldwork in countries where dark skinned people speak funny languages you fucking despicable douche bag.

I have never met a racist anthropologist, it is kind of diammetrically opposed to sitting around in villages on the floor for weeks and months on end with dark skinned people speaking funny languages.

I could give you a reading list but a) you wouldn’t read it and b) you wouldn’t understand it you ignorant academic lightweight.

I notice you accuse me of lining up with the Daily Mail not Edmund Standing who routinely quotes from the telegraph and the Mail on his blog.

You fail to note my criticisms of Edmund Standing for what I see as tending to an ethno-nationalist extreme.

Though I must say I understand Edmund better now and the difficulty of cleansing Racism, and false accusations of racism, he has the entire self serving intelectual classs which you exemplify to deal with.

I am even less inclined to think that his attack on academia as the source of thei puritanical vacuity was intemperate. Now I think it is spot on.

where the fuck do you think you get the right to reproduce Racist words on a thread where no-one used them?

You are not quoting are you marko does it give you a secret thrill to use such forbidden language does it marko?

Honestly I would like to give you the opportunity to call me a racist to my face (My dark skinned funny language speaking boyfriend will be watching as my second).

Care to name the place and time and weapons of choice (I would prefer bare fists but am happy with most weapons that slice and go bang).

I am sick of being insulted and called a racist by peoples whose names appear in red on this blog.

I happen to take accusations of racism incredibly seriously because I take racism seriously. I despise it with every fibre of my being.

My whole adult life has been about doing the incredibly difficult work of really understanding other cultures and appreciating their richness and complexity, even when the food has been shit and I’ve had Dengue fever and Malaria and there has been absolutely nothing to buy.

I’ve got several hours recording of Mongolian throat singing if you like ethnic music and hours of ullulating at a Berber Sufi trancedance, but i don’t think that boiled bear paws or throat singing are what you mean by foreign food and Music, you lilly livered brat of a Mummy’s boy (now how do I know that is the case?).

No I am really fucked off and am out of here. I am out of here for my Turkish lesson where I hope to learn the correct conjugations of fuck, fuck my ass, suck it etc.

Then I go to dinner with a new beau, he’s Anatolian and very dark and speaks a funny language only if you are a moron or are scandelighted by saying it.

When he is sliding his very dark dick into my ass at my recently learned Turkish encouragement, i shall think of your pasty smug face and your prim white ass and what it is evidently missing.

Now clutch your pearls in horror why don’t you.

“as those who would take us back not to some identified time in the past but to a 21st century version of what they feel the past was like based on watching old episodes of Z cars.”

We aren’t harking back to the past, and we aren’t even watching TV. We are looking out of the window now at everything you want to smash up.

Basically Monty you don’t want a website dedicated to free-speech. You need one where you are the only one doing the speaking and can therefore avoid any awkward questioning at all and where anybody who disagrees with you immediately becomes part of some mythical elite who are dedicated to stopping your right to eat crumpets on the bowls club lawn.

In other words you want your crumpets and to eat them too.

We are looking out of the window now at everything you want to smash up.

What do I want to smash up?

I think Metta’s annoyed with you too.

I think Metta’s annoyed with you too.

Well that’s life. Sometimes you disagree even with people you have the greatest respect for.

You should have seen the arguments I used to have with Marko about class!

If being ‘well informed’ means wanting to keep out dark-skinned people who speak funny languages, and lining up behind the BNP and Daily Mail on the immigration issue, then I’m very proud to be poorly informed.

The trouble with this is that as I mentioned in the 1st comment on this thread, the majority of immigrants also believe that there’s an immigration crisis. That we need to reduce net immigration is a view held by 95% of the population. It’s only on the absolute fringes of opinion that people think there’s not a problem. It’s a tiny handful of extremists who think 300,000 a year is fine. And they are the ones building support for the BNP, by insisting that the views of the mainstream majority must be denied or smeared as racist. And this will continue, and the BNP will grow and grow and grow.

“What do I want to smash up?”

The culture and environment that is already there. You want to destroy it. You ae like a bloke with a bucket of drowned kittens, standing at the door of the RSPCA demanding to be let in.

The culture and environment that is already there.

What rubbish! I have said nothing about wanting to smash up anything (I have merely said that – and I realise this is difficult to understand – based on a study of any history anywhere ever, things change and you had better get used to it!) If you personally want to dress in tweeds and pretend we live in the 1930s then jolly good luck to you!

You by contrast have said that you would like to destroy the culture into which I was born and still live.

You ae like a bloke with a bucket of drowned kittens, standing at the door of the RSPCA demanding to be let in.

You have found your own logic problem with this statement.

If the kittens have already been drowned then there is no hope of their revival…

You’ve got your city the way you want it. Good. Now live in it and stay away from the rest of us.

I’ve got my little town, and like most people around here, I like it just the way it is.

I won’t be dictated to by some deluded preacher from the Guardian reading classes.

You’ve got your city the way you want it. Good. Now live in it and stay away from the rest of us.

Get orf moi laaannnd!!!!

Monty, please don’t think that Londoners differ from anyone else on this matter; they don’t, other than a tiny handful. Everyone else notices the congested roads, tubes, everything. Everyone knows the place is full. Put it this way: if anybody campaigned for office on a platform of “There aren’t enough people in London, let’s have another million”, they’d be strung up and they’d deserve it.

Wardy, I’m sure you are right. London seems irretrievably damaged to me. I used to love it, and I used to have favourite haunts, as I suspect many of us have done. It is my capital city too. But to be honest, I would rather be in New York.

You can’t just keep cramming more and more unrelated folk into a restricted patch of territory, and undermining the substrate culture of the rule of law. It’s like lighting a fire under a petrol tank. It destroys fellowship, and neighbourliness. Ultimately, it makes people start regarding eachother as a form of pollution.

So to me, now, London is a foreign country. A place I may not go to.

But before it all erupts, we should close the gate and tell the huddled masses to breathe free somewhere else.

Because you aren’t sending your overload up here.

Yes Graham. Get off my beautiful lawn. And take your daft notions of the heed, and your diversity, and your your Chinese take-away with you.

Damn you, and damn the plastic inflatable bendy-bus you rode in on.

Good and you keep your deluded fucking dreams about “metropolitan elites” where they belong – up your arse.

I see the BNP have managed one county council seat so far by the way. That will no doubt be the “majority” talking.

I see the BNP have managed one county council seat so far by the way. That will no doubt be the “majority” talking.

No, because the majority is overwhelmingly against racism and against mass immigration. Only the BNP and their helpers try to link them together.

And that’s why (according to you) they will “grow and grow” is it?

It is my capital city too. But to be honest, I would rather be in New York.

New York is made up of 40% immigrants whilst in the entire population of the UK no more than 7% were not born here (according to the IPPR)

You are completely cuckoo.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jul2000/nyc-j31.shtml

So long as net immigration continues at this level and remains opposed by 95% of the public then yes. Fraser Nelson wrote about this in the Speccie a few weeks ago – the paradox of a nation that’s never been less racist but where the main racist party has never been more popular. Bloody obvious why, of course, but what the hell.

Graham and I seem to have reached a consensus. He will never try to impose his utopian notions on the provinces. I will never seek anything that looks like the rule of law in London.

I await your confirmation of this accord Graham.

Well I live sort of between the two – in a bit of Middlesex that technically counts as being in Greater London, but which doesn’t qualify as being vibrant and diverse, hence the high house prices, since everyone knows what vibrant and diverse actually means. I’m happy to be on speaking terms with London – some of my best friends are Londoners – but my next move will be outwards.

I’d be nearer a consensus if you had any evidence of me trying to impose utopian notions anywhere at all….

Although I have to say that your idea that the north is immigrant free is rather funny; compared to the stand-off segregated situations between whites and Muslims in many Northern towns London is a veritable dream.

As for the rule of law in London the big news (in my bit anyway) is the murder of two foreign students by two native British people.

Although I have to say that your idea that the north is immigrant free is rather funny;

Has anyone at any point said that being “immigrant free” was a good thing?

Graham
5 June 2009, 8:16 pm

I’d be nearer a consensus if you had any evidence of me trying to impose utopian notions anywhere at all….
—————————

OK.

Whatever you want. I just want the concensus.

Your way in London, my way in my neck of the woods.

All you have to say is yes.

Graham and I are about to agree that the wishes of the majority in any local zone, are to be respected and adhered to in a democratic manner.

YOO HOO GRAHAM!!!

One can’t help wondering where Graham could possibly have gone….

Howay wor Graham!

Graham, what I am going to say about you next, is not very nice.

You might prefer to just drop in and honour our agreement.

All you have to say, is that you will agree to leave the rest of us alone.

My position is this.
I say that Graham, and Marko, and their ilk, have an agenda. And it is very destructive.

That agenda involves the imposition of uncontrolled and untenable levels of immigration, on established communities, who are given no say in the matter.

And when the inevitable problems strike up, Graham and Marko will be standing on the sidelines hurling accusations of racism at those very same communities, and making things even worse.

It’s what they do.

But if you take a serious look at them, and what they instigate, everything they do is designed to actually stir up racial hatred.

And this is why Graham will not meet my challenge. He has no intention of leaving the provincial UK alone.

He hasn’t smashed it yet you see.

Has anyone at any point said that being “immigrant free” was a good thing?

I’m not quite sure what that has to do with what I said to be quite honest.

One can’t help wondering where Graham could possibly have gone….

Well Sherlock, being a member of the “metropolitan liberal elite” I was watching “Have I got news for you” of course.

Your way in London, my way in my neck of the woods.

What do you understand to be “my way” (apart from being a song sung by Frank Sinatra?)

I say that Graham, and Marko, and their ilk, have an agenda. And it is very destructive.

Oh here we go – more “zionist cabal” stuff…

That agenda involves the imposition of uncontrolled and untenable levels of immigration, on established communities, who are given no say in the matter.

I have said from the start on this thread that I have no problem with immigration controls – I think marko said the same a bit later.

And when the inevitable problems strike up, Graham and Marko will be standing on the sidelines hurling accusations of racism at those very same communities, and making things even worse.

fantasy built upon fantasy – keep going!

But if you take a serious look at them, and what they instigate, everything they do is designed to actually stir up racial hatred.

Well we only run a zionist cabal part time of course – the rest of the time we may or may not be running the BNP.

And this is why Graham will not meet my challenge. He has no intention of leaving the provincial UK alone.

Today peckham tomorrow the world!

(What a nutter!)

Monty. I’ll give you a clue here. I am not a member of any political party and the last time I was anywhere any metropolitan elites was when I had a drink with Marko and Wardy nearly a year ago.

So thanks for the overwhelming confidence in my ability to single-handedly impose my will on provincial Britain (but its a bit cuckoo isn’t it mate?)

That’s OK Graham.

We all wondered if you had gone a bit, well, dead.

Here is our agreement:

Graham and I are about to agree that the wishes of the majority in any local zone, are to be respected and adhered to in a democratic manner.

All you have to do, is sign up to it. I already have. I agree to that.

I had to taunt you back out somehow.

———-

Graham and I are about to agree that the wishes of the majority in any local zone, are to be respected and adhered to in a democratic manner.
——-

Go on.

Graham and I are about to agree that the wishes of the majority in any local zone, are to be respected and adhered to in a democratic manner.

Sounds like a recipe for communalism to me. So what you are saying is that if Muslims are the majority in Bradford and want to impose sharia law they should be able to do so? Is that your contention?

I had to taunt you back out somehow.

You didn’t. I turned up anyway.

the last time I was anywhere any metropolitan elites was when I had a drink with Marko and Wardy nearly a year ago.

I’m not having this. I thought you were the metropolitan elite. I don’t even live in an 020 7 area. My Oyster card gets topped up with a fiver about once a month. I’m practically in Stonehenge.

I thought the Metropolitan elite lived in Brighton. Ven will be adamant that no self-respecting metropolitan elite would live in South London.

Sign up to it.

You’ve already got yours.

Monty I cannot sign up to a dangerous multi-cultural plan like yours.

I wasn’t calling you part of the metropolitan elite anyway wardy.

But Nick Cohen was there and there is nobody more metropolitan elite than him (except maybe Boris)

And I’m sorry Monty I can’t promise to leave you alone as my wife has decided she’d like to move to Sheffield…

the wishes of the majority in any local zone, are to be respected and adhered to

I do fancy Graham as emir of London.

An Emir would just execute the Mrs and stay in Deptford.

Monty, I’m ever so sorry for disfiguring your native land by emigrating to it.

I am handy with a pitchfork, given a chance.

Graham, despite having all his own way in our capital city, is twisting and turning, ducking and diving, because he wants to impose his own way everywhere else as well. All he ever had to do was state his acceptance of local democracy, but he can’t, because it would spike his guns.

He does not support the rights of communities. In his view, they deserve to be smashed up, and their people replaced.

In charge of an extermination camp, he would be brilliant.

Graham, despite having all his own way in our capital city

What? I can’t even get served quickly in Somerfields!

He does not support the rights of communities.

Hang on, who was arguing against multiculturalism????

In charge of an extermination camp, he would be brilliant.

I wouldn’t you know – I’m just not management material – I’m way too soft.

Habibi,
Will you please get out of the line of fire?

You and me will get along just fine so long as you learn never to intervene when I am persecuting a lefty moron.

If we were Yanks I’d be telling you the same thing about rattlesnakes.

despite having all his own way in our capital city

Yeah, I love the way he engineered Ken’s victory.

You and me will get along just fine so long as you learn never to intervene when I am persecuting a lefty moron.

When do you intend to start this “persecution”?

You and me will get along just fine so long as you learn never to intervene when I am persecuting a lefty moron.

Have you ever auditioned for a film role as an Arab despot? You might do well.

Monty, I’m ever so sorry for disfiguring your native land by emigrating to it

The discussion was about uncontrolled immigration, not specific individuals. It’s the failure of some people to grasp this distinction that’s causing the silly accusation from the usual quarters that objecting to uncontrolled immigration is “racist”.

Mettaculture, you’re a closet racist. Deal with it.

Metta, you’re not a racist, and anyone who says you are is a liar.

‘That we need to reduce net immigration is a view held by 95% of the population. It’s only on the absolute fringes of opinion that people think there’s not a problem.’

So if, in a given Muslim country, 95% of the people were to say that Jews hold too much power in the world, are we supposed to agree with them, just because they’re in the majority ?

What if 95% of Russians or Iranians believe that homosexuality is an abomination – are we to accept that as the legitimate mainstream ?

‘It’s a tiny handful of extremists who think 300,000 a year is fine. And they are the ones building support for the BNP, by insisting that the views of the mainstream majority must be denied or smeared as racist. And this will continue, and the BNP will grow and grow and grow.’

This, Wardy, is blaming the anti-racists for the rise of racism.

People don’t vote BNP because they have sensibly assessed the pros and cons of mass immigration and,after much reflection, decided that mass immigration has a harmful effect on the economy and society. They vote BNP because they are racist.

Let the racists vote BNP if they want to. But don’t let the Labour or Conservative parties try to adopt the BNP programme in order to win over the racist vote. That would mean the fascisisation of mainstream politics.

Metta isn’t a racist.

Well, Wardy, you share his disgusting views, so you would say that.

We are all racist’s according to the pasty white boy. He know’s you see, being a spolit middle class narcissistic solipsistic pasty white brat.

Oh I do so take accusations of racism from white people so seriously (especialy those who first asked where I was from).

In 30 years I have only ever been called a racist by white middle class puni-’liberals’ in the UK (and to a lesser extent in the US).

Maybe I have so rarely been called a racist because I spend an awful lotless time in the exclusive company of white people than Marko Academic (Mother’s very proud of him) Whore.

You know Marko I am an awful lot less White than you are, on account of the dark genes and the Roma grandmother, people so well treated in the Balkans.

I was often called pikey or gippo as a child (my Brother got it far worse he’s Anatolian or Iranian dark, whereas my Fathers Brother would not be picked out of a crowd of pakistanis)

I am never assumed to be British and my entire life I have been asked by the English ‘where are you from?’.

Mostly now people guess that I am Jewish, (and of course everyone loves a Jew) though for a welcome change in Venezuela recently everyone thought I was Brazilian.

Add to that the fact that my partner of 10 years was Colombian, I think I have a good idea of what racism is about and if I were racist I think I might have been told by now by friends and loved ones who also know what that visceral hatred is about.

I really can’t work out whether you are really pathetically stupid (despite what you and your mother so evidently think), and so incapable of forming an argument, that when you feel outargued you resort to childish accusations of ‘I don’t believe you ‘ and ‘any way you smell’ rendered in the acasemic form of ‘racist’; or

Whether this represents an aspect of a more serious disorder, my top contender would be Narcissistic Personality Disorder because diagnostically it fits so many other aspects of your I, I, me me me character.

Racist is some kind of defensive reaction when you think people are picking on you and you feel the need to be oppressed.

Certainly you are not remotely concerned with social harmony and the genuine integration of migrants into this country.

You think you are an anti-racist because you scream racist at anyone who disagrees with you, whatever their ethnicity or their experience of racism or their history of anti-racist work (now as a lawyer I have specialised in discrimination law dick wad).

You are a fraud you pale faced charlattan.

Mettaculture, you’re an abusive, blustering bully. You seem incapable of engaging in any kind of discussion without an inordinate degree of rudeness, aggression and personalised attacks. Yet when someone gives you a taste of your own medicine, you immediately wet your pants and start crying.

Just to remind you – you called me a ‘bigot’ on the thread about Greek fascism. But did I blubber about it and wet my pants ? Of course not.

For the record, you’re a lawyer – you’re more middle class than I am.

You may think that your own ethnic background means that you can’t be racist. But guess what ? People of any ethnic background can be racist. Trying to claim that your own racial pedigree gives you more right than me to decide who is ‘racist’ really only proves my point.

You’re a long-winded, pompous bore who can’t make any point without using at least fifty paragraphs to make it.

My advice to you: if you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.

‘pasty white boy’

‘pasty white brat’

‘pale faced charlattan’

Attacking someone on the grounds of their skin colour is about as racist as it gets.

But don’t let me stop you, Mettaculture; just keep on digging…

Bingo

You took the bait and proved my point, Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha I was spot on you have oppression envy.

OOOOh poor Marko is the victim of racism, really racism, can you imagine what he must be going through.

You really are an incredibly stupid and incredibly narcisisstic, one liner.

In three years that is all I have ever heard you say in response to anyone who critices you.

BTW I did not attribute any essentialised racial characteristics to you they are purely descriptive terms.

Unlike you who has continuously defamed me by calling me a racist, which without doubt would lower a persons reputaion in the mind of the average person.

However noone would believe you because as a person who has accused anyone and everyone a racist, for all manner of disagreements with you (and that is the diagnostic feature in common they are disagreements with YOU) you have considerable form so no real reputation in this area to protect.

If your endless wolf crying of racist caused no harm then you would just be a venal liar.

As it is racist is an accusation intended to cause considerable harm to a persons reputation.

You have done this before and then (as now) HP posters (I think it was Brownie) now it is Wardytron, who you have also accused of being a racist, and Graham, so in these circumstances, brat and charlattan are fair comment.

It is not me that is digging a hole and throwing his reputation for truth into it but you, you egotistical fool.

You are terminally, childishl, dull.

Don’t worry nobody is coming for you, you are too boring.

Not even my friend whoe middle name is Ghengis.

Its like Predator vs Alien. I bet Ghengis could kick Attila’s ass any day.

Edmund Standing

I apoligise I do not wish to take over your thread.

Actually I have re-read your blog.

I cannot agree enough about the importance of standing up (sorry) to false accusations of Racism. It is right that you give this co-equal status with opposing Racism and extremism and being pro-British.

I think this thread illustrates perfectly the destructiveness of false accusations of racism, where no position short of no limit mass Immigration is accused of being racist.

My criticism’s remain specifically the Cultural marxism Frankfurt school argument.

I think its wrong, not least because of Habermas article ‘The Enlightenment an Unfinished project’ in which he predicts the rise of a coalition of the , pre-moderns, the anti-moderns and the post moderns against the idea of reason and social progress, but also because of its Lind/buchannon genesis in which the target is not so much Marxism (that is the demonizing tag) but all aspects of liberalism even those that have now become consensual (equality for women for example0.

My other criticism, and it is leass a criticism than a plea really, is to always be alive to the ways in which ethno-cultural myths and symbols can be deployed racistly.

Of course you are right that certain symbolicaly nationalist motifs such as the Union jack or St Georges day parades are not inherently racist at all and must be redeemed from that association.

Its just a difficult boundary isn’t it but there is a boundary for sure and even the most constitutionally robust political nationalisms (demos) such as the US use and deploy certain symbolic acts of joining the citizens to the state.

Ethno-cultural nationalism > civic and political nationalism are poles on a spectrum rather than fully independent distinct types of nationalism.

So I take it that you two don’t fancy having a drink sometime then?

I would cos its quite possible that like me he is nicer in person. But only if he would agree to an Aliens vs Predator combat duel.

Best of three wins (either the video game or with figures on a chess board).

I am still a bit confused about how I was first a racist because I thought there should be a fair and non discriminatory immigration policy (with quotas), then I was a racist because he had surmised telepathically that I din’t like dark skinned people who spoke funny languages.

Now thirdly I am a racist because apparently he has cleverly surmised that i don’t like white people.

Now even if we were to accept even for a nan-second that racism could be a thought crime, what would you call a person who doesn’t like darkskinned people and white skinned people, other than an egalitarian misanthrope?

How did he now that Ms. Anthrope is my drag name?

Oh and if we are meeting can I wear my Summer Habit?

My Sister’s of Perpetual Indulgence name is Sister Mary Annabolica Dementia and by special dispensation I am allowed to wear the Summer Habit (wimpel and Jock strap) all year round (apologies to venicka and John P I did not choose this I had a laying on of hands by a missionary who insisted I was a nun I just didn’t know it yet)

Well now I think Marko was being attacked before the flare-up with you (it shouldn’t carry over to another commenter but we can all get a bit wound up and forget our manners now can’t we?)

Oh and if we are meeting can I wear my Summer Habit?

You are welcome to wear whatever you like in my presence (once you have seen a naked German pensioner you have seen everything.) But you have now spoilt the surprise even before I have asked Venechka along too…

Mettaculture,

clearly you are trying to clean up the bad image you gave of yourself by writing now “serious” comments.

Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to admit that you went to far and played too low on your comments. It was not enough for you to present your credentials as anti-racist by claiming to be an anthropologist, a dark-skinned person who was called gipsy or whatever when you were little and someone who had a partner of a different nationality or ethnic background. You also had to make nasty comments about Marko’s origins and mother, and finally to remind the readers that he has pale white skin, in a clear case of reversed racism in which your darker skin makes you an anti-racist while his pale skin makes it illegitimate to claim for himself the anti-racist label. By choosing that line or arguments you discredited yourself and humiliated yourself.

Indeed, Graham. I think our friend Mettaculture is rather volatile and quickly gets carried away with himself, but is rather thin-skinned when he’s retaliated against.

Really, though, I’m not quite sure why he’s upset, as he said earlier that racists like Winston Churchill and others have made a great contribution to our country’s heritage, so should be defended as a group against attack by bigoted anti-racists like me. And if that’s what you think, you shouldn’t really mind too much if someone calls you a racist.

It is, of course, entirely possible for a racist or other bigot to swing both ways; to be racist in opposite directions at once.

It reminds me of the story of the far-right Serbian emigre Ratibor Djurdjevic, who went back home from the US to Serbia to set up an organisation, to save Serbian culture and religion from the corruption of the decadent, materialist West. But he found that the local Serbian employees that he hired for his organisation didn’t have American work ethics, and weren’t as ready to work hard as the people he was used to back in the US. Soon, he got so fed up that he began insulting them on the grounds that they were lazy, backward Balkan types…

Well I think that there is some weird cosmic fault line that has set you two against each other but that in the best of all possible worlds you would make one hell of a team!

Sarah

You have no idea you have not been here long enough.

He does this all the time and always gets to call the victim card.

I am afraid that you joining in (yes this has happened before too) to chide me makes me see red even further, he is always trying to illicit such a response.

He does not understand a debating chamber he thinks it is a court of law.

Well in a court of law Racism has a clear meaning it is less favourable treatment towards someone, based on colour, race, nationality, ethnic or linguistic origin. less favourabl treatment and you have to prove it.

Racism is not what a person feels or thinks it is an objective measure.

I don’t care Sarah, because I will not be called a racist by someone continuously when it is his sole modus operandi.

he is a fine example of the poisonouness of false accusations of racism he is an academic and that is why academia has become fetid with its show trials and disciplinary hearings and dismissals.

I can say what I like about my own life I am not claiming anything and i think it disgraceful of you to ridicule my ethnic origins (’gypsy or whatever’) ‘whatever indeed’and life experience of being subjected to real racist abuse.

I don’t need your judgement and your biased intervention.

Why don’t you carefully. I mean carefully read the whole exchange in its entire context before you jump in to slap my wrists.

BTW Mummy’s boy says nothing about the Mother it refers to a kind of boy who won’t grow up. And he is pasty, it refers to a sallow palour of face, look at the photograph on his blog.

Yes of course I wanted to insult him because he never listens and never backs down, and never, never argues he just accuses people of racism.

Read carefully he is saying in the thread above that anyone who does not believe in Mass, unlimited immigration is a racist and really a supporter of the BNP. (he even stated that my careful argument about equality vs diversity was alie to cover my racism.

I mean why doesn’t he go to a BNP meeting and take on some skinheads if he wants to show his credentials (he is far to young to have been involved in the anti-nazi league).

This is shit and there is one thing in life that I will never take is a false accusation of racism.

I must say Sarah I am very surprised at you I have a great deal of respect for your comments. You have gone down greatly in my estimation too because I think you might have used a bit of grey matter before you jumped in.

Marko has no direct experience of racism no matter how much he would like to.

I can tell you one thing for all his vaunted anti-racism I don’t think that amounts to speach policeman of other white people (whose lives he knows nothing about).

I have told him before that I take accusations of racism so seriously that if he were not accusing me in an internet forum (and I have the strongest commitment to free speech) he would be in serious trouble.

If I were in a work situation and he made such an accusation I would react with utmost speed and intensity.

I cannot obviously convince you of how seriously I consider fallse accusations of racism (good God he even accused Wardytron of being a racist and sharing my ‘disgusting views’ because he stated that I was).

If you want to see a great film about the puritannical sanctimonous sef righteousness evil unleashed in academe by false and casual accusations of racism see the ‘Human Stain’ with Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman

I just wish he would just shut the fuck up on and on with accusations of racism, twisting every comment denouncing anyone who doesn’t believe in his frankly insane belief in unlimited mass immigration.

Just look at the perversion of my words that is not what I said about Churchill, out of context again.

I know one thing for sure if a horrible racist backlash does occur he will not be manning the barricades.

If he wishes to insult me and accuse me of the most egregious attitudes and crimes (Racist behaviour is an offence), then i am quite happy to insult him back. of course he feels vindicated and goes of smugly thinking ’see told you racist’.

if you doubt my words just cruise back through the archives. I am not joking it is pretty much his only response to criticicism.

If I could be arsed I would run some of my legal testimony crunching software and pull out every time he has done it quantify it and give a qualitative analysis of exactly how and to what ends he does this.

It stinks and I am more shocked that most people ares so cowed by accusations of witchcraft that they are two frightened to stand up to it.

I really don’t want to flatter his passive aggressive bullying little ego but everytime he calls racit in future I will respond with;

BNP enabler.

Again I am disapointed in you and the ‘gypsy or whatever’ is quite shocking. The whatever ‘gippo’ and ‘pikey’ usually prefaced with fuckingare pretty equivalent to ‘nigger’ they are the words used before you are attacked. I would have thought as an iberian you might have been more careful before trivialising the prejudice that Los Gitanos encounter.

Please try harder next time.

Graham

You know he loves me really he is just to afraid to admit it yet.

He’ll come around and one day I’ll affectionately call him ‘Hun’ and he’ll call me ‘pikey’ as we playfully box each others ears while we eat gherkins and drink Sliwowitz and Tokai and I play the accordian.

Graham

You are right though there is some weird quantum nexus phenomenon at play.

I have had two stommpathon’s with him where he called me a racist and I made fun of him.

One was about his name. Yet the other day David T had a post all about the funny (many of them ethnic) names of politicians in the elections. Not a peep out of marko no accusations of racism.

And now quite clearly all I have said is that as part of a rational management of immigration a limit on the numbers of yearly immigrants, together with a fair transparent and nondiscriminatory policy of application to migrat, is a good thing and not intrinsically racist at all.

Now he seems to think that Edmund Standing is in complete agreement yet my disagreements with Edmund are about his drawing of the boundary to close to ethno-cultural nationalism.

If he were to read Edmunds blog he would see that he was much more strident in his calls to end mass immigration.

No its definitely me he has it in for.

I know he loves me really and I wouldn’t insult him at all and i know he’s a smart bunny (and the terms I have used for him are not what I do when i really want to insult someone) if he would just debate.

It does make him come across as a blockhead. To simply call someone a racist of course shuts down all debate.

The problem is most people just let such an accusation stand.

If he wants to explore someones views then he must do that it sharpens ones wits and keeps the neurons supple.

Academe is now the converse. You get your PHd and are officially very intelligent then you settle down to a neuronally undisturbed endless reproduction of your knowledge at that time.

I knew I had to leave an academic life when I looked around at people who had arrived 10 years before and I knew I would end up criminally insane or at the least with criminal dress sense.

You see i only do this for his own good its no fun for me (well a little bit but that is mean but not seriously so).

In fact he is not really sallow or pasty. He is pale (but that’s OK) and very handsome.

A Black Brazillian friend of mine (where officially they have no ‘racism’ like in Venezuela, certainly it is very different) became a friend after he had observed me for some weeks. He remarked ‘you really have no colour feeling at all do you?’.

No I don’t I know this because it has never been the deal maker on who gets closest to me.

As I can’t talk to him when you next see him at the youth club disco can you tell him I like him really.

People don’t vote BNP because they have sensibly assessed the pros and cons of mass immigration and,after much reflection, decided that mass immigration has a harmful effect on the economy and society. They vote BNP because they are racist.

Bollocks. Also, you’re fat.

Wardy

Is he fat?

I don’t care what colour he is, but fat well, of course some of my best friends are fat as are transexuals, and of course for their rights I will always fight but into my personal erotic space, no it just well.

Breasts on my back just don’t do it for me sorry.

Well a little belly I can deal with, as long as they are prepared to let me rebuild them with abs of steel and cannon ball biceps.

Oh sorry am I revealing to much well there was once this hunky guy I met who was a bit fat and then told me that he was a male to female transexual.

I’m not ruling out anything mind why limit ourselvs? its just sometimes it get a bit too postmodern for a first date.

mmm fat you say? and a BNP enabler. I don’t think my therapist would approve I must stay away from enablers.

To simply call someone a racist of course shuts down all debate.

Is this true? Personally I think you would have to be a very weak person to let it shut down debate. Several times here people have tried to call me anti-semetic (not to mention islamophobic of course. Tey never have any evidence for such an accusation does it stop me typing away? (Does it fuck.) Maybe it has something to do with my total lack of (or need for) ethnic origins. There is no more “rootless cosmopolitan” than I.

Course that frightens some…

The egos of academia have nothing on those of political websites either methinks…

Mettaculture:

I was myself called a gipsy many times during childhood and so have my brothers. At first I didn’t realize it was offensive, only when my school mates refused to sit next to me or play with me (and the same happened to my brothers). Almost everybody has experienced at least once how it feels to be discriminated, either for ethnic reasons or others. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily inoculate people against discrimination.

Not being a native english and having travelled to England only once, practising my english mostly with other non native speakers, I am not aquainted with the racist jargon in your language. Therefore the expression gippo or pilkey have no clear meaning to me, thus the ”’gipsy or whatever”’, which were not meant to offend, but only to comprise the expressions you used yourself. I also don’t know if the word gipsy is pejorative. In Portugal gipsies define themselves as gipsies and have pride on the word cigano.

Now, about my Iberian identity, let me just tell you that in Portugal the gipsies are the most discriminated group, much more than the blacks or any other minority. It’s not a fact I would be proud of, but it’s the sad truth. For most people the gipsies are seen as trouble-makers, bullies, drug-dealers and parasites (this because of the subventions that they get) who refuse to integrate themselves and stick to their backward costumes. I don’t share this perspective but this is what most people think of gipsies. I don’t have any reason to believe that it is different in Spain as a whole, despite the fact that the gipsy culture has deeply influenced andalucian culture. Anyway it’s not very different in other countries with gipsy communities.

About your reply to my comment, we have this expression in my country that says if you don’t want to be a wolf you don’t wear a wolf’s skin. You did make negative comments referring to Marko’s skin colour, after having described yourself as dark skinned. That I call reversed racism. I add that I always feel bothered when people feel the need to classify themselves and others by their ethnicity, nationality, religion or sexual orientation as you do, for instance referring to your black Brazilian friend.

On the contrary, I have never read or heard from him anything that I could classify as racist of xenophobic.

Besides this, I also think that this kind of contention is not appropriate for civic-aware people. It seemed more like a typical teenager’s bullying, something that sadly is quite common in blogs, and for the record it was you behaving like a bully.

And finally, if there was a scale for tastlessness your latest comment would obviously blow the scale.
I don’t know you at all, for me you’re a nickname and I am judging based solely on what you wrote. I was surprised to see the tone of your comments. Can you read what you wrote as if it was someone else’s comments? Well, based on the image you display of yourself is of a bitter person who really envies academics and sublimates such feeling through contempt. Curiously it was you and not Marko who abused the argument of authority based on knowledge by speaking about your experience as an anthropologist. Marko merely spoke about his personal experience as a londoner and through that revealed his preference towards a cosmopolitan society.

As you have only read the last few comments, I have my fingers in my ears and I am not listening. You are not the moral guardian of this place.

But if you want to read something shocking why not read Markos post on the next thread up on Asylum and immigration where he states that he is quite happy to destroy the traditional culture of the UK as it makes services cheaper for the middle classes.

Really try and keep your haughteyness to your self.

OK you don’t like schoolboy childish insults and humour. Then don’t read them.

I am rather more concerned by the sticks and stones behind Markos arguments (such as they are).

I really do argue, as do others that his arguments which are nothing but the consensual neo-liberal market justification (as if that was not discredited) are the cause of the rise in BNP support and other anti-immigrant forces.

He is basically empoyed by the Henry Jackson Society (look it up please.

He is also prepared to accuse anyone who disagrees with him of Racism an accusation that in a work situation could easily lose them employment.

But you like so many others seem to think this is ok. WEll I don’t

I am sorry but I have nothing but contempt for such a person and will use childish insults to indicate my contempt and ridicule.

Just like he does for the BNP and anyone who disagrees with him.

I will insult someone who feels it is his entitlement to destroy the social cohesion of a society for the price of a few services.

So get out of the way. It is obvious you still havn’t read the arguments yet you feel free to judge me.

I do not feel judged I think you just look silly and humourless coming in like a school mistress saying ‘you disgusting little boy’.

Well yes it is little boy talk because he refuses to discuss like an adult I am now blowing rasberries, because this is the only level that gets to him.

He always steps first across an adult boundary of debate into personal abuse which he thinks he is entitled to because in his mind he has decided his enemy is a fascist.

BTW there was until recently a shop in London called ‘Dirty White Boy’ it is not racist because linguisticaly that phrase does not mean its black coloured opposite. Thats language for you.

BTW Calling someone a gypsy in Iberia does not mean exactly the same as calling someone a pikey or gypsy or diddicoit in England and Wales there are relatively so few Gypsies (more travellers) and they are so completely apart from society (living in caravans or by myth in houses where they have burnt all the doors) that they serve an exemplary role of the lowest level a person could fall to.

To call someone a pikey is to refer to their poverty, their shoes, their home and their morality and criminality it is allways a violent and abusive term. You could say I am a Gypsy no-one could say I am a pikey (unlike nigger or queer it is not capable of radical reappropriation)

Anyway I don’t want to have a conversation as you have a view of me that you will now like to maintain. Thats up to you.

I will apologise to Marko when he apologises to all the non-racist people he has abused who simply have a different view on how best to manage immigration in the long term interests of society and the migrants themselves.

I am an anthropolgist by training and worked for years in developing countries on development and health issues ( where I never encounterd the PC nonsense of Marko) where if you are a racist people wont work with you and the country doesnt let you come back,

10 years ago I retrained as a Barrister and the cases I have fought have only been legal aid or Pro Bono, in the areas of race, Sex and Disability Discrimination, Assylum, Immigration, Deaths in Custody, Actions Against the Police, criminal law.

A Barrister is paid by a solicitor, most of my clients were obviously not white. If you are racist the solicitor wont use you again and the clerks wont give you work.

But know a Henry Jackson revolutinary libertarian free marketeer feels he is entitled to call me a racist.

Well the silly little boy can fuck off.

Please stay out of our silly feud (bbut there is a serious issue behind it) because I think you are a decent thoughtful and compassionate person who jumped in (understandably when I look back at the last exchanges) at the bitter end of a dispute.

I do apologise for the way this thread has decended and the offense my words may have caused to others reading them de novo.

I will not apologise to Marko because he is stubbornly ignorant and he protects this with passive aggressivness (he is always such a victim) an apology has to be a mutual affair.

BTW I, My Mother, brother and sister are fat.

Sarah

lets not blow this out of proportion.

I am white I have blue eyes but I can go very dark in the sun. It is curious but I actually change race if you will.

When I was in Venezuela recently I was a Gringo until I tanned then I became Brazillian (I have a slight Brazillian accent as I learned Portugese there before I learned Spanish)

I have an ethnic look somewhwere between Eastern europe and the middle east, many people think I am Jewish.

I am a hybrid but whatever I look like itis definitely not English.

Pikey, Gadj diddicoit etc are very pejorative so I s Gypsy. People call themselves travellers if they are non Roma, or Roma.

My Grandmother came from a settled and more or less integrated (easy because the south walians are often dark haired and dark skinned).

You must understand that my self revelations were not to score points to refut Marko’s accusation that I just didn’t like dark skinned people who spoke funny languages.

I find that unbelievably outrageous. How dare anyone say such a thing when they know nothing about a person.

He accused me of being a white person who didn’t like Black people and foreign cultures and languages.

That is fighting talk for me.

You accuse me of reverse racism. Well it is really just racism. If I were non white and made such comments but I did so because I knew exactly how he would react.

I find his attempts that you can hate white people and non white people for their skin colour and still be a racist.

Surely my point was if you hate all skin colours equally then you are not racist you just hate people.

That was the sole reason for those comments. Stupidly i thought marko would be trapped in a trap of logic and dissapear.

But know. You see he knows I am a racist really because I disagreed with hinm I must be.

Anything I say must be further proof to the witchfiner that I am a witch.

Oh he has one other line about class.

If anyone mentions class they are being chauvinist because class doesn’t really exist but (in a paradox only Marko can manage) they are also discriminating against him and prejudiced because he is middle class.

So this is a form of yes RACISM (I’m not kidding read the threads its all there).

Anyway
Desculpe si he pertubado os sentimentos de Vc. Abracos

Graham

Well I should have said in acadme an accusation of racism stops all debate (that’s why after making the accusation marko says stop digging) but of course not with us stroppy types.

About ethnicity.

Well mine was allways problematic, as would anyones be if you were made to wear a leek to school.

And I reacted against my Father. But in the last couple of years since he has been ill and passed away I have ben there a lot more and I feel a lot more Welsh.

Undeniably when your Father dies you feel like a little boy, but if you go to a nearby village and find the same bubble gum machine on the wall of the same shop where it always was.

Well I am trying to write a prose poem it is so richly densely compacted in meaning.

I never thought I had an attachment to place but it is impossible not too, this is how we evolved.

Yous say there has always been change everwhere at all times.

Yes but not at the same rate. and further more big population movments are rare. Human beings traditionally (and still for most people) never move beyond a 40 mile radius of where they are born.

It ws always thus. In some of the MTt DNA testing of a 9,000 year old cheddar gorge skeleton a local history teacher gave a sample simply in order to help calibrate the test against a modern genome.

He turned out to be a direct descendent on the Maternal line.

I understand some of the human attachment to place now better.

I also think it is so hypocritical of those who would argue for displacement levels of immigration in some areas (that is what mass means) yet profess to feel something fo the displacement of palestinians or Kasmiris or Tibetans.

You often read in the liberal MSM of how the han Chinese are destroying Tibetan culture by ethnic dilution (ie immigration) and how we must support the poor tradiional Tibetans and their culture.

At the same time any fears articulated about mass immigration here is met with ‘deal with it racist’.

My afinity for Wales now is more to do with the fact that it preserves aspects of the social democratic communitarian world i was born into.

And of course I find my argumentative streak is just the norm for presbyterian traditions.

In fact if you move to the socialist republic of Sheffield I think you will rapidly develop an attachement to a place and its people that is simply no longer possible in most of London.

There is no East End of ‘Eastenders’

I think you will go, I think Mrs Graham is going to get her way and you will go trudgin over the moors with a sense that you have always lived there.

Sarah

I have a certain disdain for a kind of academic you are right, I was one and I found it unbearably claustrophic in its disciplinary narrowness and interdepartmental conflicts.

A cloying sanctimoniussness about the place. Which is a shame because i am still commited to the norms of Scholarly endeavor but of a more renaissance kind.

I do regard the social and political sciences as having produced little of worth over the last 20 years except an obsession with identity politics at the expense of social solidarity, and an unhealthy obsession with denunciatory claims of racism.

In fact if you forget about the surface words of PC exactitude and scratch beneath to the logic such as it is you find an essentialinsg of cutlrue and race and ethnicity that is absolutely racist.

As I say if Tibetans are defending a proud cultre by defending themselves fromhan ethnic dilution but British people arguing against immigration are racist what exactly is going on?

Indeed many so called anti-racists supported the recent Tibetan riots that included some horrendoulsy vicious attacks on han Chinese.

In fact ethnic dilution is just a PC good victim word for immigration or Transmigration.

If you said British culture is being destroyed by ethnic dilution, everyone (including myself I admit) would dismiss that person as a racist.

I still find it hard to believe that a white person calling another a white boy is being racist as whiteness in this country is not a subordinate racial status.

If one black person calls another ‘Nigga’ you might say they have internalised the racism of their previously subordinate status.

Personally I hate it but in the US it is common among African-americans. I must admit i was pleased when a black friend called me a ‘dumb nigga’ (yes sometimes it is important not to pretend to be colour blind, thats another form of racism, to pretend to not see a difference you are immediately aware of is just silly and can cause rea offence).

He did admit however that he wouldn’t like it if i used the word to him’no’ he ‘laughed ‘you ain’t that much of a nigga’..

So my final point on this is yes I accept that I was exceptionally childish using an english schoolboy sort of humour, because i think Marko is primly uptight about somethings.

I do not despise him quite the reverse I know he is a good sort really I do not think he is hateful or badly intentioned. I do not despise him but some of his views.

So I was also self parodying in my satire, about my sexuality, my skin colour (he brought that up not me) and my body type (you would automatically think me fat, I put good money on it).

So a fat white boy calling someone who is white (and almost certainly less fat than me) is parodic not abusive.

Do you understand this mocking self mocking English humour Sarah.?

I do realise other people find it childishly unfunny, but what can I say? its like slapstick or Carry On films, its part of my culture, its naff, but I find it funny.

I gave him so many targets for free that he could have come back on. Shame he just wont play.

In fact if you move to the socialist republic of Sheffield I think you will rapidly develop an attachement to a place and its people that is simply no longer possible in most of London.

I may possibly develop a different kind of attachment. But I disagree that it is not possible to be attached to places in London (to be honest I find that a little insulting) and fear such such dismissals of a constantly-changing society which is just as much a part of my life as the sweet shop in Wales is to you,still invoke in me pictures of Serb Nationalists shelling the mongrels of Sarajevo. That is not to suggest in any way that you would be amongst them,but it may be some kind of an acceptance that the “pure” are always programmed to dismiss the “impure” as second-rate as Monty has been doing all thread

It is clear to me that it is almost impossible to have a civilized discussion about immigration. Having emigrants in my family and nieces of a different nationality and being myself a potential emigrant that impresses me.

I don’t find your comparison to the Tibetan case a good one. One thing is the Chinese government trying to colonize Tibet in order to change its ethic composition, while relegating the Tibetans at best to a status of second class citizens and destroying their culture, another thing is Britain, a free country that because of its dynamism attracts people from all over the world.

Of course immigration is an issue any democratic government must pay attention, and it is a sovereign right of any country to decide who gets in and who doesn’t. However, in a moment when Europe is living an economic crisis which causes had nothing to do with immigration, immigrants are increasingly seen as scape goats. The image of the white sheep expelling the black sheep speaks for itself, but I wouldn’t be worried if such line of reasoning was restricted to the far-right. But it is disturbing to see how racist and xenophobic arguments are penetrating mainstream political forces and being interiorized by moderate people. As a friend of mine said when I told him I was moving for another country, it is not a good moment to be a foreigner in Europe.

Like it or not, the kind of arguments that you presented here reinforces that tendency of infiltration of radical political ideas in the moderate mainstream electorate.

Now about your British humour on your comments, although I clearly fail to grasp the subtleties of the language, still there is a difference between irony and sarcasm, and a difference between sarcasm and poisonous comments, but maybe I am too politically correct or too strict. But I really feel that certain issues, immigration and race being one of them are not to be discussed lightly but rather that it is best to measure one’s words and keep the speech in a more acceptable record, and above all never to make it personal. That is what the preview button is there for.

Graham

Oh God this is all spinning out of control.

I am always telling marko and any one els who will listen to read Benedict Andersons, ‘imagined Communities’ all ethnicities are imagined to the extent that in remaking they are made up. Myth is not history.

All claims to blood and mysticism and land I find highly suspect if not down right fascist.

I was trying to highlight the paradox of us individually feeling an attachment to place that feels to be something essential about us vs national clims.

I am a weak political nationalist and not an ethno-cultural nationalist. i recognise that my name a part of ethnic nationalist 18th C Celtic revival is a confection with no real continuity in Wales at all.

I find all those silly dances and made up words in european cultures and those lumpen vernacular styles all fake.

Ethnic nationalism is fake yet ethnic differences are true.

I am weakly tolerant to ethnic nationalism in the sense that it preserves a cultural heritage (Irish Music is a living tradition and endlessly experimental) and gives people meaning and identity.

As a humanist I do not think it is my place to rob anyone of that certainly not for cheaper cleaners.

Identity is not useless. It helps us get to the end of a sentence.

If I say how much nonsense a lot of cultural ethnic nationalism then marko tells me I am a racist.

If I say cultural ethnic natonalism can be found through a degree of autonomy and absolutely doesn’t need the creation of another ethnically pure (at least concept) of a state, Marko says I am a racist.

If I say we can have a rational non racist Immigration policy marko calls me a racist.

If i say that he does have connections to a place (in London) that he would feel sad to see destroyed. he says I am accusing him of being a communitarian and an anomic liberal, and its a pretence this concern for equality and I am a racist.

If I said shit was brown and snow was white hewould call me a racist.

He is a radical libertarian free marketeer (see the thread above on asylum) and his ideological rational for unchecked immigration is his right wing free market political beliefs.

I don’t see why he should get a free ride on what I think is absolutely a divisive and catastrophic rationale for immigration that is anomic.

He mentions having cheaper services he never says he is prepared to pay higher taxes to ensure the equal access to public goods and social integration, resulting from his policies because he would think the market can solve it and his pocket eill remain heavier.

Of course you have a profound attachment to place in London.

That was what I was trying to explain to Marko, he might think of himself as a free floating autonomous island but he is not.

We are all shaped by community so we all have a municipal duty to the common weal.

(It was that that made me feel Wels no songs of blubells and winsome wenches with the harp playing. Methodist socialism is still (just ) alive in Wales.

Hell I am a Londoner since I was 19 it is the only place I have lived in the UK .

There are places that bring tears of sadness to my eyes, or chuckles of wry amusement when I go to them. I have also observed one place in central London where I have lived off and on for over 20 years and it has changed and it is the reduction in community that I notice most.

This has always been a place of immigration and of change sometimes far greater than we have now (the Blitz is almost unimaginable).

But what we have now is a rate of change combined with the economic effects of 24/7 casualised labour high rents and property purchase prices and over stretched infrastructure.

I am a hybrid and I like hybridity. I am a polyglot and more than usually culturally adaptable and have always felt I could live anywhere.

But I couldnt. I could not live other than for a year or so in a conservative closed authoritarian racially and ideologically pure society that is anathema to me.

But other people are not me as I have learned harshly in my personal relatioships.

Immigration is hard its hard for the migrant of course most people would prefer to migrate as a group and to maintain their own customs and language and this is perfectly possible as long as ethnicity is seen in humanitarian terms not in terms of political right.

Some of the most meaningful people in my life have gone back home because they want an end to the stress, they want to understand peoples jokes while standing at a bus stop.

it also appears that as we age the familiar is more important to us.

So yes I have learnt (against the arrogance of my brattish youth) via the intermediary of learning to respect other culures where i have often been alone, the only white man for miles around, and what they tell me gives meaning, a location for their lifes narrative if you like.

And I feel that a gentle and inclusive English culture is necessary for English people.

After all the liberal elite who most insistently push multi-culturalism have a very strong sense of their culture and their englishness.

The public school elites from the top public schools will never feel their culture (replete with all the assumption and trappings of power)challenged no matter how diverse and anomic society becomes.

Immigration is not the problem but mass immigration purely for (discredited) neo-liberal radical market economics reasons with a society shaking from the effects of 30 years of anti community policy.

A confident outward looking nationalism which is based on a degree of security has no problem integrating migrants and engaging in the social acts of reciprocity, found in all stable communities, with the newcomers.

How could I oppose immigration when I have often been the stranger in a strange land. I have though I think developed some insight into the structural conditions that predispose to me being treated politely and those that lead to hostility and the perception of me as something not quite human and a thing to be ignored or fleeced,

Thats all I want a new civically aware participatory hybrid culture that allows people to merge or retian their cultures (host and guest as they see fit).

Sarah

I don’t accept that there is nothing xenophobic in wanting a balanced NON DISCRIMINATORY immigration policy.

Rather it is the failure of political elites t address this that is causing the rise of far right policies.

I have two degrees in Anthropology and I have been called a racist by Marko the moment I open my mouth (actually its just me really ben on the thread on Asylum and why don’t you read what I said on asylum).

Marko has no sociological sphistication so he dismisses these arguments as racist.

In fact only academics and a small section of liberal media and the ruling political class in Europe act tlike this and think that the declaration racist must be the end of the debate.

Britain is now a country that has a communalist seggregates social structure that can deliver the muslim vote to any party that bids the highest.

Our society is becoming politically fractured.

The simple way of putting this is this way.

I have never ever on HP ever argued for anything other than a fair non discriminatory immigration policy like that of the US and Australia.

You cannot argue that the Australian policy is racist just because there are some racist Australians who don’t want any foreigners.

It is a fair non-racist points based system that manages immigration (at faily high levels ) but with regard to the integration of people while they arrive.

Policies of unrestricted immigration with no criteria are racist because they have no concern for the welfare and integration of immigrants into what if not managed can be a hostile environment.

These people absolve them selves of any responsibility to look at obvious issues of a managed policy because if (hopefully never) there is a terrible backlash against immigrants they will simply wag their fingers while shouting racists.

Well I am not prepared to allow some people to enable this situatioon to come to pass, merely becaue they will examine nothing that questions their sense of moral purity as anti-racists and theri right to declare who and what is racist.

Sorry if I am a racist and I am introducing racistmand xenophobia into mainstream discourse then we can talk no further on this.

I will not be silenced on these issues and I hope some people will wake up before its to late.

I am tired of being shoved in the streets in London by angry people with a sense of entitlement and greivance and no sense of communal decency.

I am migrating however (for a long maybe indefinite period) to a country where people are not white and speak another language but treat me with impeccable politeness and after a time when I reciprocate first politeness then show myself to be a reliable person who respects their culture some become my friends.

Call me a racist if you like. Iam not just a person with a strong sense of social responsibility that gets pissed up the wall in England.

Graham I am pure mongrel as are my pets. I like to call us healthy hybrids.

I had a dog called Monty as a kid, it was a mongrel.

The insuance is so much cheaper than on pure breeds. of course breed and race were interchangeable terms for the 19th and early 20th C hence stupid terms like ‘the English race’ and ‘half breed’

In Germanic languages breed of dog is still Rass.

Maybe we should bring back the word breed

‘eeeeeugh and what brrreed are you’

‘London breed ma’am if you please’

The Kennel Club is Nazi eugenics in full flow and in the name of pure breed and pedigrees they are producing hideous mutants about time that the RSPCA and the BBC have pulled out of crufts.

I would only have a pedigree if i was a nutter that wanted to subject my dog to a painfull life and an early death.

No Hybrid vigour is the future.

You are no more of a mongrel than I am so don’t try and claim the mongrel highground.

In any event my heart is certainly as black as yours.

Ha (I’m not being so serious now) but you know I cannot even claim to be pure mongrel. The fact is that until my adoptive parents died (within the past 3 years) I had no idea of any background at all (now, and it will surprise nobody here that my birth certificate shows no father) I find I am Irish on my mothers side (I feel no new attachment to Ireland – I have never even been there. No plastic leprachauns have appeared amongst my roses) London is still my home.

Anyway, pass the bodhran and lets sing Danny Boy…

By the way are you on facebook Metta? Drop me an email at baggzagain@aol.com if so.